Introduction
There is a pattern of discrepancy and convergence between ancient dates established scientifically and ancient dates provided in The Urantia Book.
In general, the dates given in The Urantia Book, regarding the evolutionary developments of the last 35 million years, correspond with the dates produced by radiometric dating. Between 35 million and 450 million years ago, radiometric dates are longer relatively by an average factor of 1.5. This relationship slightly increases from the later to the more recent dates, followed by a more rapid decrease to 1.0. From 450 to 550 million years ago, the factor increases from 1.4 to 4.0. Earlier than 550 million years ago, radiometric dates are consistently longer by a factor of 4.0. The Urantia Book says that eukaryotic (evolutionary) life was brought to our the planet 550 million years ago and that 450 million years ago marks the appearance of protozoa. Mammals are said to have evolved 35 million years ago.
Physicist Chris Halvorson speculates—based on the implications of the discovery of massive quantities of “unstable” technetium and promethium in the atmospheres of some stars, as well as numerous other considerations—that the rate of radioactive decay can be altered locally. He suggests that the spatial environment has been regulated as part of the divine overcontrol of the evolution of life on this planet. Put simply, the idea is that evolution is an aspect of God’s technique for creation and that the planet gets “cooked” at various “radioactive temperatures” during different stages of the evolutionary process.
Though consistent with Halvorson’s theory, The Urantia Book does not specifically affirm his explanation. And notwithstanding the calibration of the relative increase in radiometric dating to one decimal place, the rate is an estimation.
See History of Life by Chris Halvorson, PhD.
From the Urantia Papers:
Paper 57: The Origin of Urantia
Section 8: Crustal Stabilization, The Age of Earthquakes, The World Ocean, and The First Continent
(57:8.1) 1,000,000,000 years ago is the date of the actual beginning of Urantia history. The planet had attained approximately its present size. . .
(57:8.2) The atmosphere, together with incessant moisture precipitation, facilitated the cooling of the earth’s crust. Volcanic action early equalized internal-heat pressure and crustal contraction; and as volcanoes rapidly decreased, earthquakes made their appearance as this epoch of crustal cooling and adjustment progressed.
(57:8.3) The real geologic history of Urantia begins with the cooling of the earth’s crust sufficiently to cause the formation of the first ocean. Water-vapor condensation on the cooling surface of the earth, once begun, continued until it was virtually complete. By the end of this period the ocean was world-wide, covering the entire planet to an average depth of over one mile. The tides were then in play much as they are now observed, but this primitive ocean was not salty; it was practically a fresh-water covering for the world. In those days, most of the chlorine was combined with various metals, but there was enough, in union with hydrogen, to render this water faintly acid.
This section goes on to describe changes that occurred about 950,000,000 years ago. Then, describing events from 900,000,000 years ago, The Urantia Book states:
(57:8.11) This entire age was characterized by frequent and violent storms. The early crust of the earth was in a state of continual flux. Surface cooling alternated with immense lava flows. Nowhere can there be found on the surface of the world anything of this original planetary crust. It has all been mixed up too many times with extruding lavas of deep origins and admixed with subsequent deposits of the early world-wide ocean.
(57:8.12) Nowhere on the surface of the world will there be found more of the modified remnants of these ancient preocean rocks than in northeastern Canada around Hudson Bay. This extensive granite elevation is composed of stone belonging to the preoceanic ages. These rock layers have been heated, bent, twisted, upcrumpled, and again and again have they passed through these distorting metamorphic experiences.
(57:8.13) Throughout the oceanic ages, enormous layers of fossil-free stratified stone were deposited on this ancient ocean bottom. (Limestone can form as a result of chemical precipitation; not all of the older limestone was produced by marine-life deposition.) In none of these ancient rock formations will there be found evidences of life; they contain no fossils unless, by some chance, later deposits of the water ages have become mixed with these older prelife layers.
Not only does The Urantia Book specify Hudson Bay for the largest deposits of this preocean ancient rock, it also states that this rock will not be an especially pure example of the earliest rock because of the violent geological conditions that existed at that time. The relative age, the location, and the conditions that created these specimens, and their current condition are all now supported by scientific research.
The original research article, published in Science Magazine, September 26, 2008, is a highly technical account of the dating process. However, numerous articles explain the substance of it.
A Canadian Press article reports:
The Earth’s oldest rocks are located along the eastern bank of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec in an area known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt.
While the rocks were discovered seven years ago, it was only last spring that a group of scientists from McGill University, the University of Quebec in Montreal and the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington D.C. were able to put a date on them.
“First when we got these results we didn’t really believe it,” Jonathan O’Neil of McGill’s department of earth and planetary sciences said in a phone interview.
“We reanalyzed the rocks and then said ‘Wow, it must be true.’ We keep getting the same results,” said the 29-year-old researcher from Dunham, Que.
While the age of the Earth itself is estimated at 4.6 billion years, most of the original surface has been crushed and recycled through the movement of giant tectonic plates across the planet’s surface. This discovery pushes back the age of most ancient remnants of Earth’s crust by 300 million years.
“Geologists now have a new playground to explore how and when life began, what the atmosphere may have looked like and when the first continent formed,” O’Neil said.
By measuring tiny variations in the chemical composition of the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone, the researchers were able to date various rock samples to between 3.8 billion and 4.28 billion years ago.
O’Neil spent the last four years studying the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone, especially one specific type of rock in the belt that the scientists decided to call “faux-amphibolite”, for it was a very unusual rock.
“It turned out that we got an age of 4.28 billion years for that specific rock, which makes it the oldest portion of continent that we can find at the surface of our planet,” O’Neil said.
Researchers used isotopic dating, a new dating technology previously used to date meteorites, which analyzes the decaying of a radioactive material contained within the rock. The technology can only be used to date rocks that are 4.1 billion years old or older.
“The data from these findings will give researchers a new window on the early separation of Earth’s mantle from the crust in the Hadean Era,” said O’Neil.
One of the findings already puzzling researchers is the discovery of a type of rock that would need an ocean to form.
O’Neil said the discovery would imply that a shallow ocean already existed 300 million years after the Earth’s formation.
Note how this last statement is fairly consistent with the 100 million year time period given in The Urantia Book between the earth’s origin and the formation of this rock, once the discrepancy between radiometric dating and Urantia Book dates is factored in.
The online edition of NPR provides this additional information:
Scientists have found isolated mineral grains called zircons that date back to 4.36 billion years ago, but the rock that was originally around these grains has eroded away. So until now, the oldest-known rock has been the Acasta Gneiss, an outcropping in Canada’s Northwest Territories that’s thought to be 4.03 billion years old. But O’Neil and his colleagues think their rock could be even more ancient.
A Science News article from September 26, 2008 notes the relationship between volcanic and plate tectonic activity in the formation of the rock:
The oldest dates came from rocks termed “faux amphibolite,” which the researchers interpret to be ancient volcanic deposits. . .
The rocks are significant not only for their great age but also for their chemical composition, which resembles that of volcanic rocks in geologic settings where tectonic plates are crashing together. “This gives us an unprecedented glimpse of the processes that formed the early crust,” says Carlson.
A 2005 Live Science article supports The Urantia Book’s assertion about early ocean formation being an important part of early crust formation:
The popular belief among scientists is that Earth during the Hadean eon – all Earth time prior to 3.8 billion years ago – was a hot, volcanic environment in which no living thing could survive. Of course nobody was there to take pictures, either, so it’s all theory.
Watson claims there were oceans and continental crust similar to what we have today.
“Our data support recent theories that Earth began a pattern of crust formation, erosion, and sediment recycling as early in its evolution as 4.35 billion years ago,” he said.
Even with the existence of water and crust, the Earth was not the friendly place we now know. The planet would still have been quite hot, and the atmosphere would have consisted only of carbon dioxide, water, and volcanic gases. But life may still have been able to exist in these types of conditions. After all, scientists today find bacteria and other microbes living in similarly hostile conditions.
Nobody knows when or how life began, however. It may have developed just once, or as some scientists have theorized, the planet may have been sterilized by asteroid bombardments one or more times, with life springing forth twice or even several times.
Similarly, a 2008 Scientific America article points out how advances in this field call into question older theories suggesting that the earth’s crust did not form so early. It also has correlations with The Urantia Book’s assertion about early ocean formation being an important part of early crust formation:
The oldest rocks dubbed “faux ampholite” because they are like that modern volcanic rock, and the overall bedrock itself is similar to ocean floor that has traveled back up into the continental rock. It also suggests that perhaps early Earth was not as hot and roiling as the first geologic era’s name—Hadean— might suggest.
Lastly, the following Reuter’s article is offered in its entirety, at the expense of redundancy, for the sake providing an example of a comprehensive statement on the subject.
A pinkish tract of bedrock on the eastern shore of Canada’s Hudson Bay contains the oldest known rocks on Earth, formed 4.28 billion years ago, not long after the planet was formed, scientists said on Thursday.
The rocks may be remnants of Earth’s primordial crust, which formed on the planet’s surface as it cooled following the birth of the solar system, according to Jonathan O’Neil of McGill University in Montreal.
“Maybe it was the original crust, and before that there was no stable crust on the Earth. That’s a big question,” O’Neil said in a telephone interview.
The expanse in northern Quebec, measuring about 4 square miles (10 square km), is made up of the volcanic rock basalt. To determine the age of the rocks, geochemists used isotopic dating methods analyzing the elements samarium and neodymium.
The scientists, who describe the discovery in the journal Science, said studying these rocks can give clues about what the planet was like early in its history. The solar system, including the Earth, was formed about 4.57 billion years ago. These rocks date from roughly 290 million years later.
Richard Carlson of the Carnegie Institution of Washington said certain characteristics of the rocks suggest that water was already present on the Earth’s surface. Scientists debate when oceans first appeared and whether water formed on the planet or was brought here when icy comets struck it.
The nature of the rocks also give clues as to temperatures when they formed, Carlson said.
“Probably when the planet formed it was a cauldron, but even this early in Earth history it had cooled down to something not dramatically different from today — probably hotter but not dramatically hotter,” Carlson said.
The scientists did not find direct evidence of life in the rocks. The earliest life is thought to have been bacteria.
“We know that probably the right environment was there for life to be on the Earth—so liquid water and all it takes to have life. Now was there life? This is a big question mark,” O’Neil said.
The previously known oldest rocks, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, are 4.03 billion years old.
While some tiny mineral grains from western Australia date from 4.36 billion years ago, no complete rocks have been found older than these newly identified ones, the scientists said.
The rocks, found in an area called the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt, are a pinkish, brownish color.
“It’s a very pretty rock. It’s layered pink. And then it’s got big garnets in it that make big, round blobs in the layering,” Carlson said.
Naturally, the various articles quoted in this report, as well as the original research article published in Science Magazine, have some qualifying statements about the accuracy of the findings and the implications that can be drawn from them. Nonetheless, the evidence is corroborative of various statements made in The Urantia Book regarding the specific location of the oldest rock on earth, the conditions that created it and its current condition. The Urantia Book’s statements related to the formation of the earth’s ocean, the relationship of precipitation and ocean formation to the formation of the earth’s crust, and the intermixing of this early rock with later volcanic extrusions and other rock are all reasonably correlated to and corroborated by the recent findings.