Geological Society of America

T18 The EARTHTIME Project I

Sunday, 22 October 2006
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM

EARTHTIME: A COMMUNITY-BASED EFFORT TOWARDS HIGH-PRECISION SEQUENCING OF EARTH HISTORY

Paper number: T18-1
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 8:00 AM – 8:15 AM

Authors

Samuel A. Bowring Presenting Author
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Kirk Johnson
Denver Museum of Nature & Sci, Denver, CO
Douglas Erwin
National Museum of Natural History Dept of Paleobiology, MRC-121, Washington, DC
Randall Parrish
British Geological Survey, Nottingham, N/A
Daniel Condon
British Geological Survey, Nottingham, N/A
James Crowley
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Jahandar Ramezani
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Robert Schoene
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Peter Sadler
University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA
Matthew T. Heizler
New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology, Socorro, NM

Abstract

The EARTHTIME project (http://www.earth-time.org) is now two years old with over 200 participants from 30 countries. In that time there has been remarkable progress in bringing together geochronologists, stratigraphers, and paleontologists/evolutionary biologists with a common appreciation of the value and power of a highly resolved record of earth history. We have sponsored three workshops, a short course, and several topical sessions at international meetings.

The geochronology communities are engaged in a major effort to eliminate inter-technique and inter-laboratory biases, the main limitations to the goal of the initiative. EARTHTIME prepared, calibrated and began distributing a mixed 205Pb-233U-235U-tracer solution for use in high-precision U-Pb geochronology, and several zircon standards were prepared and distributed. Use of these materials will eliminate much of the inter-laboratory bias. In Ar-Ar geochronology, we have sponsored distribution of multiple samples, including large quantities of the Fish Canyon sanidine as a preferred monitor.

The EARTHTIME project continues to foster cooperation between geochronologists and stratigraphers/paleontologists. It encourages approaches such as CONOP-9 that can produce composite sequences for thousands of first- and last-appearance events of fossil taxa together with other time-stratigraphic events, including dated tephra-falls. When integrated with high-precision geochronology, these composite sequences can break barriers to resolving power imposed by traditional zones and stages, and will allow, for example, continuous serial estimates of species richness as a function of time.

EARTHTIME is developing an active program of education and public outreach and increasing awareness within the geoscience community. The outreach effort led by the R@dius Project at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science has created a 30-minute geochronology video, curricula, and live data casts between EARTHTIME researchers and middle school students. The momentum of EARTHTIME is building, but progress towards the ultimate goal of a highly resolved temporal framework for the past 600 Ma remains dependent upon community involvement.