Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution - New York Times

Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution - New York Times: "Editorial Observer
Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution


By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: August 23, 2005

Last month a team of paleontologists announced that it had found several fossilized dinosaur embryos that were 190 million years old - some 90 million years older than any dinosaur embryos found so far. Those kinds of numbers are always a little daunting. Ever since I was a boy in a public elementary school in Iowa, I've been learning to face the eons and eons that are embedded in the universe around us.
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I know the numbers as they stand at present, and I know what they mean, in a roughly comparative way. The universe is perhaps 14 billion years old. Earth is some 4.5 billion years old. The oldest hominid fossils are between 6 million and 7 million years old. The oldest distinctly modern human fossils are about 160,000 years old.

The truth of these numbers has the same effect on me as watching the night sky in the high desert. It fills me with a sense of nonspecific immensity. I don't think I'm alone in this."