Approximate age
An Earth history experiment
Your Birth
in Deep Time
4.6 billion years. 365 days. Where do you land?
Earth is about 4.6 billion years old — far too long to picture easily.
So we’ve compressed the entire history of our planet into a single calendar year.
January 1 marks the formation of Earth. December 31 at midnight is the present day.
On this scale, one calendar day represents about 12.6 million years of Earth history.
That means the rise of continents, the first life, complex animals, dinosaurs, mass extinctions and humans all have to fit somewhere between New Year’s Day and midnight on December 31.
Enter your birthday to discover what Earth was like on your day in deep time.
January 1
Earth forms
4.6 billion years ago
December 31
Today
0 years ago
Find your place in Earth history
Enter your birthday
We only need the day and month. Your actual birth year stays in the present.
No birthday information is stored or sent anywhere.
Your place in deep time
Your birthday goes very deep.
4.6 billion years ago
Today
Geological time
Closest major event
Life on Earth
Atmosphere & oceans
What the world looked like
Part of the Dig Earth Studio Lab
← Explore all interactive Earth science experiments in the Lab
A note on deep time
A calendar is only an analogy.
These dates are not literal anniversaries. Geological events often unfold over thousands, millions or even hundreds of millions of years.
Each result represents the world around that point in Earth history, compressed onto our 365-day calendar.