4.5 Billion Years of Earth's History, Explained

A grain of sand older than the oceans. A collision that made the Moon. A planet that froze solid. A supercontinent, the worst mass extinctions in the planet's history, and the ice ages that shaped the coast you live on. This is the whole story of Earth, from molten rock to today, in one film. Earth Ages tells the story of the planet under your feet, one chapter at a time, using real reconstructions of the ancient Earth. CHAPTERS 0:00 A crystal older than the rocks 1:04 The whole story in one line 1:36 Chapter 1: Fire 2:49 The collision that made the Moon 4:10 The first oceans 5:19 Chapter 2: The first life 7:48 The machine that changed everything 8:53 Chapter 3: Oxygen and ice 10:18 The boring billion and Snowball Earth 12:23 Chapter 4: The explosion of life 13:48 Life comes ashore 15:32 Pangaea and the Great Dying 16:58 Chapter 5: The age of reptiles 18:27 The asteroid 19:33 Chapter 6: Our world takes shape 20:56 The ice ages 22:06 How we know 22:58 You can still see it SOURCES • International Commission on Stratigraphy, International Chronostratigraphic Chart • Wilde, Valley, Peck & Graham (2001), Nature: 4.4-billion-year-old Jack Hills zircon and evidence for early water • Bowring & Williams (1999): Acasta Gneiss ages • Allwood et al. (2006), Nature: stromatolites of the Strelley Pool Formation, Pilbara • Lyons, Reinhard & Planavsky (2014), Nature: the rise of oxygen in Earth's early ocean and atmosphere • Hoffman et al. (2017), Science Advances: Snowball Earth • Burgess et al. (2014), PNAS: timeline of the end-Permian extinction • Schulte et al. (2010), Science: the Chicxulub impact and the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction • Alvarez et al. (1980), Science: extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction • NASA: the Moon's recession and the giant-impact hypothesis • Hublin et al. (2017), Nature: Jebel Irhoud and the age of Homo sapiens CREDITS Paleogeography: PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs, C.R. Scotese & N.M. Wright (2018), CC BY 4.0 Photos: • Stromatolites, Shark Bay: Paul Harrison, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons • Pilbara stromatolites: NASA/JPL-Caltech • Banded iron formation, Karijini: Graeme Churchard, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons • Acasta Gneiss: Mike Beauregard, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons • Dickinsonia (YPM IP 035465) and Tiktaalik cast (YPM VP 058578): Yale Peabody Museum, CC0 • Grand Canyon: Mgimelfarb, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons • White Cliffs of Dover: Immanuel Giel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons • Everest: Luca Galuzzi (CC BY-SA 2.5) and Pavel Novak (CC BY-SA 2.5), via Wikimedia Commons • K-Pg boundary: Eurico Zimbres (CC BY-SA 3.0) and Glenlarson (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons • Putorana Plateau: jxandreani, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons • Griffinfly fossil: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons • Kilauea lava fountain: J.D. Griggs, USGS, public domain • Apollo 15 Moon rock sample 15205: NASA Animation, graphics and music: original, made for Earth Ages. Narration: an AI voice (Google Gemini text-to-speech) reading an original script written and fact-checked for this channel. Made by a civil engineer in Tasmania, Australia. Subscribe for new episodes every two days:    / @earthageshistory   #EarthHistory #DeepTime #Geology