Most first-year university students across Europe can correctly arrange the origin of life, the age of dinosaurs, and the emergence of humans in chronological order, yet many hold striking misconceptions about when these events actually occurred and how long they lasted. That is the central finding of a large standardized assessment of deep time understanding, published as open access research covering 26 European countries. The study, based on responses from 7,215 students, found that roughly 91 percent sequenced the three key events correctly, but the average score on a purpose-built index of deep time understanding was only moderate, revealing a persistent gap between relative ordering and absolute temporal reasoning.
The research team, led by Paul Kuschmierz, Laurens Mecklenburg, Dittmar Graf, and Anna Beniermann, used the KAEVO-C subscale of the Knowledge About Evolution 2.0 instrument. Participants marked their estimates of three central biological events on a timeline running from the origin of the earth to the present day: the existence of humans, the existence of dinosaurs, and the origin of life. Exact dates were deliberately avoided in the questions, because prior research suggests that demanding precise numerical values may even hinder a meaningful grasp of temporal scales. Instead, the analysis compared both the order of events and the lengths and positions of the marked periods against scientifically accepted reference values.
To quantify performance, the researchers developed a Deep Time Index ranging from 0 to 100. A score of 100 corresponds to a total deviation of less than five million years from scientifically accepted dates across all three items, while a score of 0 reflects a deviation of 500 million years or more. The reference values used were an origin of life 3.8 billion years ago, dinosaurs existing from 235 to 65 million years ago, and humans existing since 200,000 years ago. In the full sample, the index averaged 58.14 with a standard deviation of 20.71 and a right-skewed distribution, which the authors classify as a moderate average level of understanding.
The misconceptions documented were substantial. Across most country samples, students placed the beginning of human existence roughly halfway along the timeline, around 2.4 billion years ago on the heat maps, far too early. Many students in Turkey, Cyprus, and Romania placed the origin of humans close to the formation of the earth itself. For dinosaurs, the European average estimate placed their existence between roughly 3.8 and 2.5 billion years ago, vastly earlier and longer than the scientifically accepted window. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Latvia, Slovakia, and Spain, a considerable number of students effectively equated the emergence of dinosaurs with the formation of the planet, and a large green peak near the timeline’s left edge showed that many students across the sample similarly conflated the origin of life with the earth’s formation.
Country differences were considerable. Deep Time Index scores ranged from 36.02 in Latvia to 72.05 in Sweden, with Austria, the Netherlands, France, Poland, and Germany also scoring above average and showing relatively low standard deviations of roughly 12 to 18 points, indicating homogeneous understanding within those samples. At the low end, alongside Latvia, were Cyprus, Greece, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania, and Slovakia, where standard deviations often exceeded 20 points, pointing to wide variability between individual students. On the relative ordering task, more than 32 percent of Cypriot students and about 27 percent each of Romanian and Turkish students failed to arrange the three events correctly, while nearly all students in the Polish, French, Swiss, and Ukrainian samples succeeded.
A key result concerns the relationship with evolution knowledge and acceptance. Across the whole sample, deep time understanding showed only a weak positive correlation with knowledge about evolution, measured with the 12-item KAEVO-A scale (r = 0.117, p < 0.01), and no significant correlation with acceptance of evolution, measured with the eight-item ATEVO scale (r = 0.015, not significant). At the country level, with few exceptions, no statistically significant correlations appeared. Significant positive correlations with knowledge emerged only in the Czech, Spanish, and Serbian samples, while acceptance correlated significantly only in Croatia, with a moderate effect, and in Bulgaria, with a negative small effect.
The heat map analyses reinforced this independence. Regardless of their acceptance category, many students dated the beginning of human existence to about 2.8 to 3 billion years ago. Knowledge level likewise made little difference for most items, with one notable exception: students in the highest knowledge category estimated the era of dinosaur existence markedly better than other groups, though the authors caution that this subgroup comprised only four students. Surprisingly, the two groups rejecting evolution estimated the dinosaur period closer to the scientifically correct window, but the authors treat this weak, post-hoc pattern cautiously given the small subgroup sizes.
The authors argue that these findings establish deep time as a distinct conceptual domain that cannot be assumed to be acquired implicitly through general evolution instruction. They point to curriculum analyses showing that only about half of the examined European national biology curricula included explicit learning goals addressing the history of life, with Cypriot curricula containing just one such goal and Greek and Turkish curricula six each, against an average of 8.5. Italy, by contrast, addressed only two goals yet performed comparatively well, so the authors stress that the sheer number of goals gives only a rough indication of whether deep time is genuinely taught.
Religiosity alone did not explain the national differences. Turkish, Romanian, and Cypriot students are among the most religious in the European sample, yet their patterns of acceptance and deep time understanding diverge, and Greek students show a similar mix. The authors suggest instead that acceptance of evolution is shaped more directly by worldview and perceived conflict with religion or culture, whereas deep time understanding depends more on magnitude reasoning and exposure to geoscience content. They also acknowledge methodological limitations: the choice of a five-million-year tolerance affects index results, the three biology-focused events skew toward the recent end of the timeline, and the data cannot identify how students acquired their notions.
Given the fundamental role of deep time in understanding evolutionary change, climate change, and biodiversity loss, the authors call for explicit curricular treatment, sustained opportunities to locate key events on geological timescales, and innovative teaching tools such as multi-touch tabletop applications and animations that let learners zoom through the tree of life. They recommend longitudinal designs and intervention-based teaching experiments to test how deep time competence develops. The broader message is sobering but actionable: sequencing events is the easy part for most students, and the harder task of grasping the sheer vastness of geological time requires deliberate, targeted educational attention.
Subject of Research: A cross-national study of European first-year university students' understanding of deep time and its relation to evolution knowledge and acceptance
Article Title: Lost in time? Examining university students’ understanding of deep time across Europe
Article References: Kuschmierz, P., Mecklenburg, L., Graf, D., & Beniermann, A. (2026). Lost in time? Examining university students’ understanding of deep time across Europe. Developmental Biology Advances, 17(1), Article 12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13227-026-00263-z
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1186/s13227-026-00263-z
Keywords: deep time, evolution education, university students, Europe, KAEVO, geological timescales, evolution acceptance, misconceptions, curriculum, cross-national study, biology education, Lost
News Source: Drew Townsend. (October 29, 2026). European First-Year Students Can Order Deep Time Events but Misjudge Their Scale. Scienmag.
