I’ve been watching the new Netflix dinosaur documentary and was like:
What is 50 million years anyways? In the documentary I did not get a sense of what this amount of time means.
So I built a to-scale scrolling timeline of the last 252 million years, from the Permian-Triassic boundary to today where 1 pixel is 10000 years:
To me it was funny to see that quite some of the famous dinosour would be more anachronistic next to let's say a Brachiosaurus vs. next to a Smartphone.
by Joetunn
6 Comments
**[OC] Data sources and tools**
**Tools:** Plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No libraries.
**Data sources:**
Geological time scale: International Commission on Stratigraphy.
Species dates and period boundaries: NHM London Dinosaur Directory, Paleobiology Database, and Wikipedia as an initial reference, cross-checked against primary literature.
Peer-reviewed literature consulted:
* Mass extinctions: Benton (2015); Erwin (1993)
* Early dinosaurs: Nesbitt (2011); Martínez et al. (2011)
* Angiosperm evolution: Friis et al. (2011)
* Bee evolution: Cardinal & Danforth (2013)
* Whale evolution: Gingerich et al.
* Human evolution: Hublin et al. (2017); Villmoare et al. (2015)
* Chicxulub impact: Alvarez et al. (1980); Schulte et al. (2010)
Some dates are rounded for presentation and the timeline is still being refined. If you spot an error I’d genuinely like to know.
Outstanding!! Loved it! Thanks for that. The wording was beautiful, all the dinosaurs that couldn’t fly were wiped out in a geographical instant. The mammals filling the gap. Fantastic mate
I like it! In the future, you might consider including a way to zoom out and see larger portions of the timeline in perspective.
Had a similar idea, but glad to see someone actually build it.
You should add geographical events, too
are you the same person who made the scroll across the radius of our solar system? the moon is one pixel
That timeline idea sounds cool! Visual aids are great for getting a sense of millions of years. You might want to check out books or resources on geologic timelines that show major events in Earth’s history. Seeing these events together can help you understand the scale better. Interactive websites or apps that let you zoom in on different periods can also give you more context. Keep exploring these resources. There’s a lot out there that can help you learn more about Earth’s history beyond what documentaries cover.