Final answer:
The timeline of Earth's history begins with its formation, followed by the rise of microorganisms, multicellular life, mammals, birds, flowers, and finally the Homo genus and modern humans. Understanding this timeline, we realize humans are a recent addition to Earth's biodiversity.
Step-by-step explanation:
Timeline of Major Events in Earth's History
The history of life on Earth is extensive, and while exact dates for some events are not well known, their order is crucial to understanding evolutionary history. A timeline can help visualize these major events:
- Formation of the Earth (around 4.54 billion years ago).
- Appearance of the first microorganisms, which are thought to be the earliest forms of life on Earth (at least 3.5 billion years ago).
- Emergence of multicellular life and eventual development from marine protists to the first multicellular animals (sometime between 1 billion and 541 million years ago).
- Origin of mammals, birds, and flowering plants (130 to 200 million years ago).
- Homo genus, to which modern humans belong, appears on the planet (2.5 million years ago).
- Modern humans (Homo sapiens) begin to exhibit features similar to those of people today (around 200,000 years ago).
These events on the geological timescale show how life evolved from simple forms to the complex biodiversity we observe today. Scientists use a phylogenetic tree to understand such evolutionary relationships, depicting the ancestry of species, shared traits, and genetic divergences over time.