Geological Time Quotes

“Unkar Delta at Mile 73
The layers of brick red sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone of the Dox formation deposited a billion years ago, erode easily, giving the landscape an open, rolling character very different that the narrow, limestone walled canyon upstream, both in lithology and color, fully fitting Van Dyke’s description of “raspberry-red color, tempered with a what-not of mauve, heliotrope, and violet.” Sediments flowing in from the west formed deltas, floodplains, and tidal flats, which indurated into these fine-grained sedimentary rocks thinly laid deposits of a restful sea, lined with shadows as precise as the staves of a musical score, ribboned layers, an elegant alteration of quiet siltings and delicious lappings, crinkled water compressed, solidified, lithified.”
― Ann Zwinger, Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon

“The decisions made in the next few years by the energy industry and the governments that regulate them will leave a record in the rocks that will last for hundreds of millions of years.”
― Peter Brannen, The Ends of the World

“Time changed for the Romantics. Whether from the rise of industrialism that made visible the accelerating edge of the Anthropocene, from the contrasting awareness of geological time, the effects of accurate time-keeping, or the collapse of time and space made possible by steam travel, their period's momentum seemed resolutely forward, while at the same time operating 'in widely varying scales, paces and planes'. That change came early for Scots, who numbered among them Watt, of the steam engine (1765), and Hutton, who published the seminal Theory of the Earth (1788). For Walter Scott, who belonged to the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1810 and served as its President from 1820, that society having published Hutton's theory, and who knew Watt personally, time's many turns would have been particularly evident.”
― Caroline McCracken-Flesher, The International Companion to the Scottish Novel