This tutorial is designed to "walk you" through a typical recent time exercise in historical geology. Before you begin the exercise, familiarize yourself with the seven fundamental laws of historical geology listed at the beginning of the exercise. A working knowledge of physical geology is also important for this exercise.

What you see in front of you is a seemingly very complex geologic cross section. Eleven separate events occurred to this area. Start by trying to determine, and justify, what the oldest event was. After you have written this down, click onto Event 1 below and check to see if you were correct. If you weren’t correct, do you now understand why you weren’t ? Next, write down, with a justification, what you think is the next event to have happened to the area. Again, when you are done, click onto Event 2 and check your work. Do this for all twelve events.