Project Origins

From the creator of Deep Time Explorer (Helsinki, May 2026)

This project started from a confusion I'd been carrying for a long time. I'm a Quaternary researcher, and my day-to-day work rarely strays from the last few million years — glacial cycles, climate oscillations, paleoenvironmental change. I know that territory reasonably well. But every time I tried to fit it into a longer timescale, I realized how unfamiliar I was with everything before the Quaternary. How did life get to where it is today, step by step? When did atmospheric oxygen start to change? Supercontinents assembled and broke apart again and again — how does that relate to today's climate? I couldn't really answer these questions, and for a long time I didn't feel like I needed to.

Eventually I realized this wasn't just my problem. Talking with other teachers and colleagues, I found most of us were in the same boat — deeply familiar with our own slice of time, but honestly fuzzy on the full 4.6 billion years. This is probably a side effect of how specialized modern science has become: paleontologists, geologists, paleoclimatologists, everyone digging deeper into their own corner, rarely stepping back to see the whole picture.

But Earth's history is, in itself, one continuous thread. The Great Oxidation Event, the Cambrian Explosion, mass extinctions, the age of dinosaurs, Quaternary ice ages, the emergence of humans — all of it happened on the same planet, on the same timeline. We've just gotten used to describing each piece in a different language, and in doing so we forget they're all part of the same story.

So I wanted to try building a timeline. Not an encyclopedia — capturing every single event is impossible and unnecessary. More like a map: something to help you find your bearings across 4.6 billion years. Pick out the key moments, arrange them roughly by significance, and let people see the outline — and find where their own area of study sits within the whole history.

This kind of thing can be useful in different ways for different people. For students, it can help build a cross-scale time framework, making connections between disciplines visible in a way they aren't otherwise. For science communicators, there are simply too many good stories in here. For researchers, stepping outside your own specialty for a moment can reveal things you hadn't noticed before.

Of course, the current version is still far from polished. The timeline so far is something I built myself; a lot of the content hasn't been carefully verified, some of it comes from the internet and may not be accurate. Illustrations and captions are still missing, and many event descriptions are still rough. I'm aware of all of this.

But I think having an overall framework, even an imperfect one, is better than having nothing. To understand any specific period, you first need to know where it sits — only then can you really start to understand it. Only by seeing changes in life, climate, and geology together on the same timeline can we begin to grasp how today's Earth came to be.

But I think having an overall framework, even an imperfect one, is better than having nothing. To understand any specific period, you first need to know where it sits — only then can you really start to understand it. Only by seeing changes in life, climate, and geology together on the same timeline can we begin to grasp how today's Earth came to be — and that's also why I built this timeline: it lets us see the order in which events happened, and how life, climate, oceans, atmosphere, and geological processes have shaped each other across this long history.

But knowing the order of events isn't enough on its own. Earth's history isn't only a sequence of events — it's also the history of life continuously evolving and diversifying. So alongside the timeline, I also want to gradually build a “Tree of Life” — the timeline answers “when did it happen,” while the tree of life answers “how are they related.” One records time, the other records connection. From the earliest life to the millions of species alive today — from single-celled organisms to plants, insects, fish, dinosaurs, birds, and humans — all of life belongs to the same continuously growing and branching tree. If the timeline shows how history unfolded, the tree of life shows how living things relate to one another. Eventually I'd like to bring the two together — not just seeing when something happened, but also which lineages it affected, and what those lineages went on to become.

Deep Time Explorer, as it stands, is still just a beginning. Many events on the timeline still need further verification, plenty of content is yet to be filled in, and the illustrations and captions still need ongoing work — this framework reflects my own process of learning and understanding deep time more than it represents a finished product. If you find this direction interesting, you're welcome to get involved too: professors, students, secondary school teachers, researchers, science enthusiasts, people who make science videos or draw illustrations — all of you could be part of this project, and I'll try to bring people together so everyone can work on the part that interests them most and suits them best.

4.6 billion years of Earth's history is too vast, and the evolutionary story of millions of species too immense, for any one person to tell alone. I hope this first version of Deep Time Explorer can be the beginning of something more people explore deep time together, understand the history of life together, and keep refining this story together.