cinzia
cervato
associate
professor
geological and atmospheric sciences
"There are so many
questions that we are not yet able to give more accurate answers to without
a good time scale."
The Smithsonian. The U.S.
Geological Survey. The San Diego Super Computer Center. MIT. Harvard. John's
Hopkins. Purdue. Texas A&M. All are part of CHRONOS (which means time in
Greek), a National Science Foundation funded project.
And it's all coordinated by Cinzia Cervato at Iowa State University. Cinzia
is coordinating a continually expanding network of individual databases, linked
by geologic time. CHRONOS will eventually deliver a dynamic, interactive and
time-calibrated framework for Earth system history as a network of comprehensive
databases containing information related to the evolution and diversity of life,
climate change, geochemical cycles, geodynamical processes and other aspects
of the Earth system.
"By putting events into sequence we will be able to see how life evolved,
how the climate changed, how the ice sheets grew and then melted away."
