Geologic Time - How it works

Historical Geology

The study of geologic time is encompassed within the larger subject of historical geology. The latter, the study of Earth's physical history, is one of the two principal branches of geology, the other being physical geology, or the study of Earth's physical components and the forces that have shaped them.

The background of historical geology is discussed in some detail within the Historical Geology essay. Its principal subdisciplines include stratigraphy, the study of rock layers, or strata, beneath Earth's surface; geochronology, the study of Earth's age and the dating of specific formations in terms of geologic time; sedimentology, the study and interpretation of sediments, including sedimentary processes and formations; paleontology, the study of fossilized plants and animals; and paleoecology, the study of the relationship between prehistoric plants and animals and their environments. Several of these subjects are examined in essays within this book.

Divisions of Geologic Time

Geologic time is divided according to two scales. The more well-known of these is the geologic scale, which divides time into named groupings according to six basic units: eon, era, period, epoch, age, and chron. In addition, the chronostratigraphic scale identifies successive layers of rock with specific units of time.

As noted earlier, stratigraphy is the study of rock layers, or strata, beneath Earth's surface, while chronostratigraphy is a subdiscipline devoted to studying the ages of rocks and what they reveal about geologic time. The chronostratigraphic scale likewise has six time units, analogous to those of the geologic scale: eonothem, era them, system, series, stage, and chronozone. For the most part, we will not be concerned with the chronostratigraphic terms in the present context.

RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE TIME.

To discuss the divisions of geologic time, it is necessary first to discuss the concepts of relative and absolute time. The term relative refers to a quality or quantity that is comparative, or dependent on something else. Its opposite is absolute, a term designating a quality or quantity that is independent and not defined in relation to another quality or quantity.

If we say that Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809, it is an absolute designation of his birth year, whereas if we say that he was born 10 years after the death of George Washington (which

occurred in 1799), that is an example of a relative time measurement. In actuality, of course, there is no truly absolute measure of time. For example, the reference to 1809 as Lincoln's birth year is based on the system of time measurement developed in the West, which, in turn, is based on early ideas regarding the date of Christ's birth. (As it turns out, Christ likely was born in about 6 B.C. )

Since the B.C. / A.D. system of dating is widely accepted and used, or at least recognized, by most of the non-Western world, a date rendered according to this system constitutes the closest possible approximation to an absolute measure of time. In any case, one knows the difference between absolute and relative when one sees it: thus, to say that Lincoln was born ten years after Washington died is obviously and unmistakably a relative statement.

In terms of geology, the absolute age of a geologic phenomenon is its age in Earth years. On the other hand, its relative age is its age in comparison with other geologic phenomena, particularly the stratigraphic record of rock layers. Thus, references to relative age are given in terms of chronostratigraphic time divisions rather than millions of years.

Relative Dating

Given the meaning of relative age, it is easy enough to guess what relative dating would be, once one knows that dating, in a scientific context, usually refers to any effort directed toward finding the age of a particular item or phenomenon. Relative dating, then, assigns an age relative to that of other items, whereas absolute dating determines the age in actual years or millions of years.

One of the principal means of relative dating is through stratigraphy, which is based on the assumption that the deeper a layer of rock lies beneath Earth's surface, the earlier it was deposited. This holds true, however, for only one of the three major types of rock: sedimentary rock, which is formed by compression and deposition (i.e., formation of deposits) on the part of rock and mineral particles. (The other types of rock are igneous and metamorphic.)

Aside from stratigraphy, discussed in a separate essay, other relative dating techniques include seriation, faunal dating, and pollen dating, or palynology. Used, for instance, in archaeological studies, seriation analyzes the abundance of a particular item (for instance, pieces of pottery) and assigns relative dates based on this abundance. The term faunal dating refers to fauna, or animal life, and faunal dating is the use of animal bones to determine age. Finally, pollen dating, or palynology, involves analysis of pollen deposits.

Absolute Dating

As dating technology has progressed, it has become increasingly possible for scientists to provide absolute dates for specimens. One such method, introduced in the 1960s, is amino-acid racimization. Amino acids exist in two forms, designated L -forms and D -forms, which are stereoisomers, or mirror images of each other. Virtually all living organisms (except some microbes) incorporate only the L-forms, but once the organism dies the L-amino acids gradually convert to D-amino acids. Several factors influence the rate of conversion, and though amino-acid racimization was popular in the 1970s, these uncertainties have led scientists to treat it with increasing disfavor.

The principles that undergird amino-acid racimization, however, are essential to most forms of absolute dating. Generally, absolute dating uses ratios between the quantities of a particular substance (let us call it Substance A ) and the quantities of a mirror substance ( Substance B ) to which it is converted over a period of time. The greater the ratio of Substance B to Substance A, the longer the time that has elapsed. The scale of time for various substances, however, differs greatly. Carbon-14 decay, for instance, takes place over a few thousand years, making it useful for measuring the age of human artifacts. On the other hand, uranium decay takes billions of years, and thus it is used for dating rocks.

Cation-ratio dating, for instance, measures the amount of cations, or positively charged ions, that have formed on an exposed rock surface. (An ion is an atom or group of atoms that have lost or gained electrons, thus acquiring a net electric charge. Electron loss creates a cation, as opposed to a negatively charged anion, created when an atom or atoms gain electrons.) Cation-ratio dating is based on the idea that the ratio of potassium and calcium cations to titanium cations decreases with age. It is applicable only to rocks in desert areas, where the dry air stabilizes the cation "varnish."

RADIOACTIVE DECAY.

Various forms of radiometric dating employ ratios as well. Every element has a particular number of protons, or positively charged particles, in its nucleus, but it may have varying numbers of neutrons, particles with a neutral electric charge but relatively great mass. (Neutrons and protons have approximately the same mass, which is more than 1,800 times greater than that of an electron.) When two or more atoms of the same element have a differing number of neutrons, they are called isotopes.

Some types of isotopes "fit" better with a particular element and tend to be most abundant. For instance, carbon has six protons, and it so happens that the most abundant carbon isotope has six neutrons. Because there are six protons and six neutrons, totaling 12, this carbon isotope is designated carbon-12, which accounts for 98.9% of the carbon in nature. Generally speaking, the most abundant isotope is also the most stable one, or the one least likely to release particles and thus change into something else.

This release of particles is known as radioactive decay. In the context of radioactivity, "to decay" does not mean "to rot" rather, the isotope expels alpha particles (positively charged helium nuclei), beta particles (either electrons or subatomic particles called positrons), or gamma rays, which occupy the highest energy level in the electromagnetic spectrum. In so doing, it eventually will become another isotope, either of the same element or of a different element, and will stabilize. The amount of time it takes for half the isotopes in a sample to stabilize is called its half-life. This half-life varies greatly between isotopes, some of which have a half-life that runs into the billions of years.

Determining Absolute Age

When an organism is alive, it incorporates a certain ratio of carbon-12 in proportion to the amount of the radioisotope (that is, radioactive isotope) carbon-14 that it receives from the atmosphere. As soon as the organism dies, however, it stops incorporating new carbon, and the ratio between carbon-12 and carbon-14 will begin to change as the carbon-14 decays to form nitrogen-14. A scientist can use the ratios of carbon-12, carbon-14, and nitrogen-14 to ascertain the age of an organic sample.

Carbon-14, known as radiocarbon, has a half-life of 5,730 years, meaning that it takes that long for half the isotopes in a sample to decay to nitrogen-14. Note that half-life is not half the amount of time it takes for the entire sample to decay, especially because the first half of the sample usually decays faster than the second half. Imagine, for instance, that you had 100 units and wanted to reduce it to zero units by continually halving it. At first, the results would be dramatic, as 100 became 50, then 25, then 12.5, and so on. Eventually you would be down to smaller and smaller fractions of 1, and each division by 2 would yield a smaller number—but never zero.

Radioactive decay works that way as well, and, thus, while carbon-14 has a half-life of less than 6,000 years, it takes much longer than 6,000 years for the other half of the isotopes in a carbon-14 sample to decay. For this reason, the use of proper instrumentation makes it possible to judge the age of charcoal, wood, and other biological materials over a span of as long as 70,000 years. While this may be useful for archaeologists, it is not very helpful for measuring the vast spans of time encompassed in the earth sciences. Furthermore, there is a good likelihood that the sample will become contaminated by additional carbon from the soil. Moreover, it cannot be said with certainty that the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the atmosphere has been constant throughout time.

POTASSIUM-ARGON DATING.

Much more useful, from the standpoint of geology, is potassium-argon dating. When volcanic rocks are subjected to extremely high temperatures, they release the element argon, a noble gas. As the rocks cool, the stable isotope argon-40 accumulates. Because argon-40 is formed by the radioactive decay of a potassium isotope, potassium-40, the amount of argon-40 that forms is proportional to the rate of decay for potassium-40.

Potassium-40 has a half-life of 1.3 billion years, and with the help of argon-40, geologists have been able to estimate the age of volcanic layers above and below fossil and artifact remains in eastern Africa. Potassium-argon dating is most effective for rocks that are at least three million years old, because it takes about that long to accumulate enough argon-40 to make accurate measurements possible.

This brings up a notable aspect of radiometric dating techniques. No one technique is most effective; rather, each technique is suited to a particular span of time. Thus, potassium-argon dating would be virtually useless for measuring the relatively short time scales for which radiocarbon dating is ideally suited. The converse is also true: as we have noted, radiocarbon dating simply does not cover a wide enough span of time to be useful in most geologic studies.

URANIUM-SERIES DATING.

We now come to the element most useful for dating the age of material samples over a broad chronological spectrum: uranium, which has an atomic number of 92. This means that it has 92 protons in its nucleus, making uranium atoms typically the heaviest atoms that occur in nature. (There are about 20 elements with atomic numbers higher than 92, but all of them have been created artificially, either in laboratories or as the result of nuclear testing.)

Both uranium and thorium, with an atomic number of 90, have unstable "parent" isotopes that decay into even more unstable "daughter" isotopes before eventually stabilizing as isotopes of lead. These daughter isotopes have half-lives that range from just a few years to a few hundred thousand years, whereas the half-lives of the parent isotopes are much longer. That of uranium-235, for instance, is 7.038 × 10 ⁸ years, or more than 700 million years. On the other hand, the daughter isotope protactinium-231 has a half-life of 32,760 years.

When uranium-235 is deposited in an area, over time it will decay to form daughter isotopes. Assuming that the sample has been left undisturbed (isotopes have neither entered nor exited the deposit since its initial formation), the age of certain types of sample may thus be determined. For mollusks and corals, for instance, the amount of protactinium-231, a daughter isotope that begins to accumulate only after the organism dies, makes it possible to date a sample. In some cases, large amounts of a daughter isotope may be deposited initially alongside samples of a parent, and if these are present in water, the quantities of each can be judged according to the amount that has dissolved. For example, the daughter isotope uranium-234 dissolves more readily in water than the parent, uranium-238.