Example sentences of "a few million years " in BNC.
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1 | By the end of the Palaeocene , only a few million years from the Cretaceous extinction of the giant reptiles , there were representatives of many of the living mammalian orders , including , for example , the primates ( the order to which man belongs ) , the carnivores ( cats dogs , and most living predators ) and the rodents ( rats , mice ) . |
2 | To do this will involve discussion of concepts which you may not immediately associate with volcanoes : the fact that Africa and South America were once joined and later drifted apart ; that the direction which is customarily thought of as ‘ north ’ would , a few million years ago , have appeared to be ‘ south ’ on an ordinary magnetic compass . |
3 | by no means all rhyolite lavas are associated with obsidian — the majority are not — and , as one goes further back through the geological record , obsidian becomes progressively more and more scarce , due to devitrification , and none at all is found in rocks more than a few million years old . |
4 | Probably the waves cut the cliffs of weak killas far back inland , over a period of a few million years . |
5 | It prowled across the lower slopes of the Pennine Hills which had been formed a few million years earlier and along the coast of the seas which covered what now are the lowlands on either side of the Pennines ( Diagram 4 ) . |
6 | If the land is all eroded into the sea in a matter of a few million years , how does the system keep on running ? |
7 | It can hardly be coincidental that these remarkable evolutionary events , taking place within only a few million years , correspond so closely in time with an episode of exceptional igneous and urogenic activity ( Larsen & Pitman , 1972 ) , the rapid disintegration of Pangaea ( Hallam , 1980 ) and the biggest marine transgression since the mid-Palaeozoic , apparently produced either by a phase of accelerated sea-floor spreading or by a dramatic increase in the length of the ocean ridge system . |
8 | We also know that the specialization took place very early in the evolution of mammals and that the ancestors of the main groups that are alive today all appeared around the same time , give or take a few million years . |
9 | It is relatively young , with a probable age of no more than a few million years . |
10 | Throughout the lunar core samples , which extend well below a few millimetres , the exposure ages of the grains are similar at all depths and correspond to a few million years exposure to the cosmic-ray intensity in the present Solar System . |
11 | It seems likely that yet another northward-dipping thrust will develop even further to the south in a few million years . |