How to Use geologic time in a Sentence
geologic time
noun-
The litter will still sit in the landfill on a geologic time scale and is not sustainable long-term.
—Lorraine Wilde, Treehugger, 23 Jan. 2023
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To float down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon is to meander through geologic time.
—Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, 20 July 2021
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In the big picture of geologic time, the range of trees native to Minnesota has evolved, and continues to evolve.
—Sarah Barker, Star Tribune, 3 June 2021
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Our rise through geologic time ended at the bedding plane that bore Liu’s fossil trails.
—Robert Moor, Discover Magazine, 5 Oct. 2016
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Yet in its brief sojourn on the screen, A Ghost Story moves through centuries of geologic time and into the deepest recesses of the human heart.
—Dana Stevens, Slate Magazine, 5 July 2017
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The lava flows that formed Craters of the Moon are fairly recent in geologic time, the most recent eruption just 2,000 years ago, expert believe.
—Fox News, 29 June 2022
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Fossils span geologic time from hundreds to even billions of years and are discovered in many rock types and settings.
—Erin Dimaggio, Smithsonian, 13 June 2019
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So, what’s been altering Earth’s days over geologic time, and does this mean anything for solstices past and future?
—Chris J. Ratcliffe, National Geographic, 20 June 2018
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The vote brought an end to a debate about whether to declare that our species had transformed the natural world so thoroughly since the 1950s as to have sent the planet into a new epoch of geologic time.
—Lynsey Addario Victoria Kim, New York Times, 19 Mar. 2024
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New York and California seem to count in geologic time.
—The Editors, National Review, 7 Nov. 2022
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But the fact that the area had not seen any land movement in four decades means little in the grand scope of geologic time, and the forces and probabilities involved in geologic events, Robins said.
—Grace Toohey, Los Angeles Times, 11 July 2023
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Idaho’s oldest rocks are more than 2.6 billion years old and contain a record of all the events that transpired during that vast period of geologic time.
—idahostatesman, 23 Mar. 2018
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The crown ruled over this bit of Africa for only 60-some years—the width of an eyelash, really, in the canyon of geologic time—and yet here sits Cholmondeley, his long shadow tracing the veranda.
—Paula McLain, Town & Country, 2 Sep. 2015
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In Nevada, old lime pits that will require geologic time to recover also could be used.
—AZCentral.com, 18 Jan. 2021
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Way back in geologic time, the Lake Wales Ridge was, for a million years, the only piece of Florida’s peninsula poking above seawater.
—Kevin Spear, Orlando Sentinel, 6 Sep. 2022
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Geophysicists surmise the inner core could have formed less than a billion years ago, which is relatively young on a geologic time scale.
—Kasha Patel, Anchorage Daily News, 24 Feb. 2023
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Smith used his work as a springboard to develop ideas that are essential to our understanding of geologic time.
—Erik Klemetti, Discover Magazine, 4 Jan. 2021
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Scientists who work at the scale of geologic time tend to think about life’s leftovers—hollow shells, bits of bone, shed leaves—not as detritus but as potential future fossils.
—Nick Pyenson, Smithsonian, 26 Oct. 2017
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Water in the Bonneville basin over geologic time has risen and fallen repeatedly.
—The Salt Lake Tribune, 20 May 2022
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Being off by even a million years — a blink in geologic time — could dramatically change those factors.
—Kendall Powell, Discover Magazine, 26 Feb. 2015
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The extinction began roughly 380 million years ago, midway through the segment of geologic time known as the Devonian period, or the age of fish.
—Cody Cottier, Discover Magazine, 23 Jan. 2021
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While that meteorite started a whole new era, the working group is proposing that humans only started a new epoch, which is a much smaller geologic time period.
—Seth Borenstein, Anchorage Daily News, 11 July 2023
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In subduction, one large section of the earth — a plate — slides slowly under another, as the earth’s surface recycles itself over geologic time.
—Henry Fountain, New York Times, 23 Jan. 2018
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Mass extinctions are evolutionary turning points — brief moments on a geologic time scale that drastically change the course of life on earth.
—Gabe Allen, Discover Magazine, 22 July 2022
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Over geologic time, the clay can turn into shale, a soft sedimentary rock that easily splits into fragile slabs.
—William J. Broad George Etheredge, New York Times, 23 Dec. 2022
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And if indeed some such culture arose on Earth in the murky depths of geologic time, how might scientists today discern signs of that incredible development?
—Steven Ashley, Scientific American, 23 Apr. 2018
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In geologic time, the volcano under Yellowstone National Park will erupt again.
—Edward Lotterman, Twin Cities, 9 Nov. 2019
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Apart from the occasional cattle ranch or sheep-herding camp, the landscape appears desolate and lonely, forgotten in the expanse of geologic time.
—Matt Stirn, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Mar. 2022
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At its core lay the realization battered into him on his first journey down the Colorado about humanity’s impermanence in the face of geologic time and how the Earth remained in a continual state of flux.
—Johnforristerross, Longreads, 2 July 2018
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Smooth expanses of ice along Europa’s face and tantalizing hints of water plumes suggest any liquid body below is seeping upward on a geologic time scale.
—Maya Wei-Haas, National Geographic, 9 Nov. 2020
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'geologic time.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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