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| | | | World History timeline |
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| c. 13.7 billion years ago |
| | | Big Bang, an unimaginably large explosion from an unimaginably small particle - according to modern theory the first moment of the universe | |
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| c. 13.7 billion years ago |
| | | Hydrogen and helium nuclei form in the first three minutes, with perhaps another 300,000 years before they combine with electrons to form atoms | |
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| c. 13 billion years ago |
| | | As gravity exerts its pressure within parts of the expanding fireball, subnuclear particles merge into more complex elements | |
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| c. 12 billion years ago |
| | | The first galaxies begin to form, as self-contained gravitational systems with gases gradually coalescing into stars | |
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| c. 4.6 billion years ago |
| | | A new galaxy, the Milky Way, forms - and one of its stars is our sun | |
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| c. 4.6 billion years ago |
| | | The new star settles down, while nuclear dust in the vicinity coalesces into planets and asteroids orbiting the sun | |
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| c. 4.5 billion years ago |
| | | The earth condenses into a solid sphere, with an inner core which is extremely dense and hot | |
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| c. 4 billion years ago |
| | | The earth's surface settles into a heaving turmoil of rock and water | |
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| c. 3.5 billion years ago |
| | | Fossilized bacteria have been found in rock 3.5 billion years old in Africa | |
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| c. 3 billion years ago |
| | | Single-celled water creatures, such as algae, begin the 2-billion-year process of evolving into slightly more complex forms of life | |
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| c. 1 billion years ago |
| | | Sponges and jellyfish drift in the sea, to be joined later by more purposeful shrimps and lobsters | |
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| c. 500 million years ago |
| | | The earliest known creature with a skeleton evolves as a form of fish | |
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| c. 400 million years ago |
| | | Plants, previously living only in the seas and rivers, begin to establish themselves on land | |
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| c. 350 million years ago |
| | | Insects become the first creatures capable of living their full life span out of the water - and the first to master flight | |
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| c. 340 million years ago |
| | | Amphibians develop lungs, enabling them to live on land as well as in the water | |
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| c. 300 million years ago |
| | | Reptiles develop evolutionary advantages for adaptation to a wide range of environments | |
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| c. 250 million years ago |
| | | The entire land surface of the earth merges into a single continent, known as Pangaea, which after about 50 million years splits in two | |
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| c. 225 million years ago |
| | | The dinosaurs dominate the planet in a way that no previous creature has been able to | |
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| c. 200 million years ago |
| | | The process of continental drift, beginning 200 million years ago, results eventually in our present arrangement of six continents | |
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| c. 170 million years ago |
| | | Mammals begin to make their appearance | |
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| c. 125 million years ago |
| | | Primitive birds begin to feature in the fossil record | |
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| c. 65 million years ago |
| | | In a very short space of time the dinosaurs die out, for reasons as yet uncertain | |
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| c. 65 million years ago |
| | | Mammals evolve in many new forms on land and in the water, using opportunities made possible by the extinction of the dinosaurs | |
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| c. 50 million years ago |
| | | Australia becomes a separate land mass, isolating its living creatures. They evolve into many species unique to the area | |
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| c. 45 million years ago |
| | | Primates evolve, from lemur-like animals to monkeys | |
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| c. 15 million years ago |
| | | A primate of this period, at ease both in the trees and on the ground, is probably the common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans | |
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| c. 6 million years ago |
| | | Various species of ape develop the habit of walking upright on two feet | |
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| c. 4.5 million years ago |
| | | Certain primates, in eastern and southern Africa, are by now sufficiently like humans to be classed as hominids | |
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| c. 3.2 million years ago |
| | | A female of the species Australopithecus Afarensis (nicknamed Lucy when her skeleton is found), lives in the Afar Depression in Ethiopia within 50 miles of where her predecessor Ardi was unearthed | |
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| c. 2.2 million years ago |
| | | Creatures of the genus Homo, classified as early modern humans, are living in east Africa | |
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| c. 1.8 million years ago |
| | | A species of human in east Africa, Homo erectus, is probably the first identifiable ancestor of modern man | |
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| c. 1.7 million years ago |
| | | The ice ages set in, to continue throughout most of human history | |
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| c. 1.7 million years ago |
| | | Homo erectus, moves out of Africa and begins to spread through Europe and Asia | |
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| 1.6 million years ago |
| | | A Homo erectus boy, aged about ten, lives near Lake Turkana in Kenya and dies at Nariokotome | |
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