Time Scale Creator
Reference time scales and graphical output system
Geologic TimeScale Foundation
Database coordinator – James Ogg (former Secretary-General, ICS)
Software design – Adam Lugowski, Abdullah Khan Zehady, Nag Varun Chunduru, Palem Gangii, Aaron Aul
“TimeScale Creator” is a time-scale database with visualization package (in Java, which should work on most platforms). This is the second installment of our dream of having time-scale graphics “generated on demand”. We invite you to give it a whirl, and provide feedback to us (jogg@purdue.edu) about any aspects of the output and underlying databases.
What it does:
(1) Screen display of user-selected time-span and selected columns of geologic time scale information (stages, bio-zones, bio-events, magnetics, sea-level, geochemistry). Vertical-scale, width, color, titles, column ordering, range charts and other features are designated by the user. Optional pop-ups provide additional background information on columns and events.
(2) Save the final graphic as an PDF or SVG (scalable vector graphics) file for direct import into Adobe Illustrator or other common drafting software. All text, boxes, colors, etc transfer as “objects”, therefore these can be modified by graphics software packages in the SVG.
Database (approximately 50,000 event-age entries are included in the tables of this version):
TS-Creator has a very detailed Phanerozoic suite. There are over 300 stratigraphic columns grouped into about 60 categories (See table of contents at: https://timescalecreator.org. All events are calibrated to A Concise Geologic Time Scale 2016 (Ogg, Ogg & Gradstein, 2016, Elsevier). A list of stratigraphic categories is under the “Choose Columns” menu, and clicking on a category directory displays sub-column choices.
Details on the many other capabilities and display options are illustrated in the manuals on the website (https://timescalecreator.org/download/download.php). Hint: You have to scroll down to the bottom of the webpage!!!!!!
Have fun exploring the data sets and graphic options, and we hope that you will find this suite useful for reference and generating base-graphics for your research and teaching.
A word of advice during exploring – there are numerous close-spaced Foram and Nanno events in the Neogene in the current database (and an abundance of Sequences in the glacial-pulsed Pleistocene), so the auto-adjust software sometimes has problems to display these details unless a vertical scale of at least 4 cm to 1 million years. A similar high-density of detail occurs with the brief North American ammonite zones in the Campanian-Turonian interval and ammonite subzones within much of the Jurassic-Cretaceous. Therefore, we have placed some of this dense-detail into "additional" columns with the lesser-used secondary events, plus shorten the genera names for the ammonites and other taxa.
A problem that may occur -- The default Java installation on some operating systems limits the amout of memory a program can use. This Java default may cause large or information-heavy displays may run out of memory. If this happens, a message will appear on the screen -- you can still save the Settings file to regenerate the on-screen display, and usually can save the non-displayed SVG graphic file to be opened in another graphics program or Firefox-type browser. If "Out of Memory" appears, then the TimeScale Creator will also explain how to increase the Java memory allocation. Unfortunately that means you have to restart TSCreator, but you can save your current settings and not loose much time.
We welcome your suggestions for major and minor improvements in the default database, visualization graphics, and overall system! Please convey your ideas, desires and critical evaluations to us at jogg@purdue.edu.
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James Ogg
(Database coordinator; former secretary of
International Commission on Stratigraphy) [