Home > Timeline of geography, paleontology

• 25 - Pomponius Mela formalizes the climatic zone system
• 1569 - Gerardus Mercator issues the first Mercator projection map
• 1620 - Francis Bacon analyzes the scientific method in his Great Instauration of Learning
• 1686 - Edmund Halley presents a systematic study of the trade winds and monsoons and identifies solar heating as the cause of atmospheric motions
• 1686 - Edmund Halley establishes the relationship between barometric pressure and height above sea levelFor considerations of sea level change, in particular rise associated with possible global warming, see sea level rise''. Mean sea level (MSL) is the average height of the sea, with reference to a suitable reference surface. Defining the reference level ,
• 1716Events Natchez, one of the oldest towns on the Mississippi, founded. Crieff, Scotland was burned to the ground in revenge for the Jacobite defeat at the Battle of Sheriffmuir. Kangxi Dictionary was published this year. This dictionary laid the fundamental - Edmund Halley suggests that polar auroraPolar aurorae are optical phenomena characterized by colorful displays of light in the night sky. An auroral display in the Northern Hemisphere is called the aurora borealis or the northern lights in the Southern Hemisphere it is called the aurora australe are caused by "magnetic effluvia" moving along the Earth's magnetic fieldThe cause of Earth's magnetic field (the surface magnetic field is not known for certain, but is possibly explained by dynamo theory. The magnetic field extends several tens of thousands of kilometres into space. The field is approximately a magnetic dipo lines
• 1770Events March 5 Boston Massacre: 5 Americans killed by British troops in an event that would help start the American Revolutionary War 5 years later. May 14 Marie Antoinette arrives to French Court. May 16 14-year old Marie Antoinette marries 15-year old L - The fossilFor other uses of the term, see Fossil (disambiguation Fossils are the mineralized remains of animals or plants or other artifacts such as footprints. The totality of fossils and their placement in rock formations and sedimentary layers is known as the foised bones of a huge animal (later identified as a MosasaurA mosasaur (Mosasaurus, Tylosaurus, Platecarpus, and other species) was not a dinosaur, but rather an ocean-dwelling serpentine (snake-like) marine reptile related to varanids like monitor lizards. These predators dominated the oceanic food chain during t) are found in a quarry near MaastrichtMaastricht also spelled Maestricht or Mestreech in local dialect, is a municipality, the oldest city of the Netherlands and capital of the province of Limburg. The city is situated on both sides of the Meuse river Maas in Dutch) in the south-eastern appen in the Netherlands.
• 1795 - Georges Cuvier identifies the bones found in the Netherlands in 1770 as belonging to an extinct reptile.
• 1811 - Mary Anning discovers the fossilised remains of an Ichthyosaur at Lyme Regis.
• 1821 - William Buckland finds the remains of a hyenas' den in Yorkshire, containing the bones of lions, elephants and rhinoceros.
• 1821-22 - Mary Anning discovers the world's first Plesiosaur skeleton at Lyme Regis.
• 1822 - Gideon Mantell discovers the fossilized skeleton of an Iguanodon dinosaur
• 1823 - Human bones are found with those of the woolly mammoth at Paviland Cave on the Gower Peninsula, proving that the two had lived on earth at the same time.
• 1855 - The first Archaeopteryx fossil found in Bavaria, Germany.
• 1858 - The first dinosaur skeleton, Hadrosaurus, is excavated in the United States and described by Joseph Leidy
• 1869 - Joseph Lockyer starts the scientific journal Nature
• 1871 - Othniel Charles Marsh discovers the first American pterosaur fossils.
• 1878 - The first Diplodocus skeleton is found at Como Bluff, Wyoming
• 1905 - Tyrannosaurus rex is described and named by Henry Fairfield Osborn
• 1909 - Discovery of the Burgess Shale Cambrian fossil site
• 1912 - Continental Drift proposed by Alfred Wegener, leading to plate tectonics and explanation of many surface features.
• 1920 - Andrew Douglass proposes dendrochronology dating
• 1920 - Milutin Milankovic proposes that long term climatic cycles may be due to changes in the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit and changes in the Earth's obliquity
• 1947 - Willard Libby introduces carbon-14 dating
• 1974 - Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover a 3.5 million-year-old female hominid fossil that is 40% complete and name it " Lucy"
• 1980 - Luis Alvarez, Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michel propose that a giant comet or asteroid may have struck the Earth approximately 65 million years ago thereby causing massive extinctions and enriching the iridium in the K-T layer
• 1984 - Hou Xianguang discovers the Chengjiang Cambrian fossil site