Earth is millions and millions of years old. In fact, our planet is four-thousand-six-hundred-million years old. When the Earth’s age (4.6 billion years) is written as a number, it looks like this: 4,600,000,000. It’s hard for us to imagine anything so old.
Has there always been life on the Earth?
Nothing at all lived on the Earth for the first billion (1,000 million) years of the planet’s existence. The conditions were not right for life. There were no plants or animals of any kind. Earth was a dangerous place where life could not survive.
Amazing! Some of Earth’s oldest known rocks are found in Scotland. They are about 3.5 billion years old.
Has the Earth always looked the same?
These maps show how Earth’s land and sea looked in the past. To fit everything on them, Earth has been drawn as an oval. For a long time, all land was joined together in one giant mass. Over millions of years it broke up into smaller pieces. They turned into today’s continents.
Is it true? The continents are still moving.
Yes. The continents move about 4 centimetres each year – the length of your little finger. Millions of years in the future, Earth will look very different from today.
Picture Credit : Google