Geologic Time Quotes

“Transfixed by the bright gaze of a lizard, I become calm. This stone on which the lizard lies was under the sea when lizards first came into being, and now the flood is wearing it away, to return it once again into the oceans.”
― Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

“Little by little, over more than two centuries, the local stories told by rocks in all parts of the world have been stitched together into a great global tapestry - the geologic timescale. This "map" of Deep Time represents one of the great intellectual achievements of humanity, arduously constructed by stratigraphers, paleontologists, geochemists, and geochronologists from many cultures and faiths. It is still a work in progress to which details are constantly being added and finer and finer calibrations being made.”
― Marcia Bjornerud, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World

“Altogether, according to John McPhee, [geological ages] number in the „tens of dozens.” Fortunately, unless you take up geology as a career, you are unlikely ever to hear any of them again.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything