Interactive: What Earth’s 4.54 billion-year history would look like in a single year

As a kid, it was tough for me to grasp the massive time scale of Earth’s history. Now, with nearly two decades of experience as a geologist, I think one of the best ways to understand our planet’s history and evolution is by condensing the entire timeline into a single calendar year.

It’s not a new concept, but it’s a powerful one.

So, how do we go about this? If we consider Earth’s age as 4.54 billion years and divide it by 365 days, each day of the Gregorian calendar represents...