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Stereographic projection of the world north of 30°S. 15° graticule. The stereographic projection with Tissot's indicatrix of deformation.. The stereographic projection, also known as the planisphere projection or the azimuthal conformal projection, is a conformal map projection whose use dates back to antiquity.
The earliest maps ignored the curvature of Earth's surface, both because the shape of the Earth was uncertain and because the curvature is not important across the small areas being mapped. However, since the age of Classical Greece , maps of large regions, and especially of the world, have used projection from a model globe to control how the ...
Mercator is also credited as the first to use the word "atlas" to describe a collection of maps. In the later years of his life, Mercator resolved to create his Atlas, a book filled with many maps of different regions of the world, as well as a chronological history of the world from the Earth's creation by God until 1568.
18th-century geologist James Hutton contributed to an early understanding of the Earth's history by proposing the theory of uniformitarianism, which is now a basic principle in all branches of geology. Uniformitarianism describes an Earth formed by the same natural phenomena that are at work today, the product of slow and continuous geological ...
The Precambrian includes approximately 90% of geologic time. It extends from 4.6 billion years ago to the beginning of the Cambrian Period (about 539 Ma).It includes the first three of the four eons of Earth's prehistory (the Hadean, Archean and Proterozoic) and precedes the Phanerozoic eon.
The De Virga world map was made by Albertinus de Virga between 1411 and 1415. Albertin de Virga, a Venetian, is also known for a 1409 map of the Mediterranean, also made in Venice. The world map is circular, drawn on a piece of parchment 69.6 cm × 44 cm (27.4 in × 17.3 in). It consists of the map itself, about 44 cm (17 in) in diameter, and ...
The first eon in Earth's history, the Hadean, begins with the Earth's formation and is followed by the Archean eon at 3.8 Ga. [2]: 145 The oldest rocks found on Earth date to about 4.0 Ga, and the oldest detrital zircon crystals in rocks to about 4.4 Ga, [34] [35] [36] soon after the formation of the Earth's crust and the Earth
Geochronology is the science of determining the age of rocks, fossils, and sediments using signatures inherent in the rocks themselves. Absolute geochronology can be accomplished through radioactive isotopes , whereas relative geochronology is provided by tools such as paleomagnetism and stable isotope ratios .