The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth
Study Guide for Episode 10
Note: Episode numbers in Study Guides and in the Netflix Streaming edition of "Cosmos" do not always agree with those of the disk set we use in class. Let the episode titles, not the numbers, be your guide to reading about or watching the episode shown in class.
Episode 10: The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth
People
• Abraham Ortelius created what is considered to be the first modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570).
• Alfred Wegener formulated the theory of continental drift.
• Marie Tharp, using data provided by Bruce Heezen, made the first map of the ocean floor, and realized the significance of the mid-ocean ridges.
Ideas
• The Geological Time Scale (GTS), a timeline of eons, eras, and periods HERE. This article contains many ways of representing geological time.
• The structure of the earth. All you need to know and more HERE.
• Convection: Yes, DO do this at home -- a demonstration of convection HERE.
• Tectonics
• Continental drift: This article contains an animation of continental drift for the past 150 million years. View a larger animation of the past 560 million years HERE, first very quickly, then at a slower pace. An even longer animation, starting from 3.3 billion (3300 million) years ago HERE (before 1 billion years ago, positions are quite speculative). Watch for color coding to show where parts have ended up today. The most detailed and realistic-looking simulation I've found, showing continental features, continental shelves, and deep-ocean features is HERE. (Can you identify the music -- without Siri?)
• Mass-extinctions: Read HERE about the five extinction events that make major boundaries of geologic time since the beginning of life.
• Tyson's Halls of Extinction: Find the "great dying" events on this figure, and note their effect on our evolutionary tree. This tree shows fewer than 10% of the extinctions (lines that do not continue to the present) in proportion to the extant species (lines that continue to the outer curve of the tree).
Updates
• It is now possible to identify pieces of Earth's crust that have been intact since only 60 million years after the formation of the Solar System. It's a very technical subject, but short versions of the conclusions are HERE.
Readings
• Poem: "The More Loving One," by W. H. Auden. Read it HERE. Why this poem for this episode?
••••••
• Abraham Ortelius created what is considered to be the first modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570).
• Alfred Wegener formulated the theory of continental drift.
• Marie Tharp, using data provided by Bruce Heezen, made the first map of the ocean floor, and realized the significance of the mid-ocean ridges.
• The Geological Time Scale (GTS), a timeline of eons, eras, and periods HERE. This article contains many ways of representing geological time.
• The structure of the earth. All you need to know and more HERE.
• Convection: Yes, DO do this at home -- a demonstration of convection HERE.
• Tectonics
• Continental drift: This article contains an animation of continental drift for the past 150 million years. View a larger animation of the past 560 million years HERE, first very quickly, then at a slower pace. An even longer animation, starting from 3.3 billion (3300 million) years ago HERE (before 1 billion years ago, positions are quite speculative). Watch for color coding to show where parts have ended up today. The most detailed and realistic-looking simulation I've found, showing continental features, continental shelves, and deep-ocean features is HERE. (Can you identify the music -- without Siri?)
• Mass-extinctions: Read HERE about the five extinction events that make major boundaries of geologic time since the beginning of life.
• Tyson's Halls of Extinction: Find the "great dying" events on this figure, and note their effect on our evolutionary tree. This tree shows fewer than 10% of the extinctions (lines that do not continue to the present) in proportion to the extant species (lines that continue to the outer curve of the tree).
Click to enlarge, or better, open the figure
in a new window, and zoom to see details.
Updates
• It is now possible to identify pieces of Earth's crust that have been intact since only 60 million years after the formation of the Solar System. It's a very technical subject, but short versions of the conclusions are HERE.
Readings
• Poem: "The More Loving One," by W. H. Auden. Read it HERE. Why this poem for this episode?
••••••
