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Timeline of geography, paleontology
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 level
1716
- Edmund Halley suggests that
polar aurorae
are caused by "magnetic effluvia" moving along the
Earth's magnetic field
lines
1770
- The
fossilised
bones of a huge animal (later identified as a Mosasaur) are found in a quarry near
Maastricht
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
.
1869
- Joseph Lockyer starts the
scientific journal
Nature
1878
- The first Diplodocus skeleton is found at Como Bluff,
Wyoming
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
1949
- Edward Murphy states his law
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
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