How to Use geologic time in a Sentence

geologic time

noun
  • Five million years is an eyeblink in geologic time.
    — Peter Brannen, Quanta Magazine, 15 Sep. 2025
  • 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
  • Our rise through geologic time ended at the bedding plane that bore Liu’s fossil trails.
    — Robert Moor, Discover Magazine, 5 Oct. 2016
  • 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
  • In Nevada, old lime pits that will require geologic time to recover also could be used.
    — AZCentral.com, 18 Jan. 2021
  • The Moon has no meaningful atmosphere, and its surface is frozen in geologic time.
    — Stephen Clark, ArsTechnica, 9 Apr. 2026
  • 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
  • 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
  • Being off by even a million years — a blink in geologic time — could dramatically change those factors.
    — Kendall Powell, Discover Magazine, 26 Feb. 2015
  • 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
  • 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
  • Readers will enjoy a tour through geologic time, discovering how plants and animals evolved.
    — Richard Horan, Christian Science Monitor, 7 Mar. 2025
  • Water in the Bonneville basin over geologic time has risen and fallen repeatedly.
    — The Salt Lake Tribune, 20 May 2022
  • 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
  • More extreme hothouse periods lurk in the deeper recesses of geologic time.
    — Madeleine Stone, National Geographic, 20 Aug. 2020
  • To float down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon is to meander through geologic time.
    — Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, 20 July 2021
  • Those spikes commemorate new geologic time periods across the Earth.
    — Seth Borenstein, Los Angeles Times, 11 July 2023
  • 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
  • That meteorite started a whole new era, scientists propose humans started a new epoch which is a much smaller geologic time period.
    — Seth Borenstein, Los Angeles Times, 11 July 2023
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Arbic, a co-author on the new paper, wondered whether changing day length could have affected photosynthesis over geologic time.
    — Julia Rosen, Scientific American, 8 Nov. 2021
  • Southwest reveals a series of sedimentary rock layers that reflect hundreds of millions of years of geologic time.
    — Larry Bleiberg, USA TODAY, 15 Aug. 2020
  • For Rebillard, the fossil is also proof that all three prey species not only lived together in the same geologic time but also died together in the same week or even day.
    — Meghan Bartels, Scientific American, 18 Feb. 2026
  • Defining the Anthropocene as this specific chunk of geologic time would limit the usefulness of the term, Ellis says.
    — Jonathan Lambert, NPR, 29 Mar. 2024
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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

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.

Last Updated: