The Time Before and After Land
The Time Before and After Land
[Caption at top of panel:] (Timeline not to scale)
[A timeline is shown with two endpoints and five other points. The points are labeled:] Big Bang Rocky planets form Earth forms Ground-nesting bees evolve The Land Before Time Thymus genus diverges Now
[Below the timeline are five overlapping time periods in three rows. The text is between two thick black bars. The time periods all start and end at two different points.]
[Big Bang to Rocky Planets Form:] The Time Before Land
[Big Bang to Ground-Nesting Bees Evolve:] The Time Before bees
[Rocky Planets Form to Thymus Genus Diverges:] The Land Before Thyme
[Ground-Nesting Bees evolve to Now:] Time for Land Bees!
[Thymus Genus Diverges to Now:] Bees Land on Thyme

This comic indulges in some wordplay on the title of the 1988 animated movie The Land Before Time , which takes place millions of years ago in the time of dinosaurs.
The comic shows a timeline of the history of the universe from the Big Bang to the present day, with The Land Before Time placed at the point in the timeline where the movie is set, as well as other seemingly arbitrary events such as the formation of rocky planets and the evolution of ground-nesting bees. The joke is that Randall has contrived several periods of universal history that sound like funny permutations of "The Land Before Time" due to certain words being homophones , such as "time" and "thyme", or homonyms, such as the noun "land" (ground) and the verb "land" (to alight). He also split the word "before" into "bee" and "for".
The title text is for the phrase "the time for Beeland" and lists 2 places (that Randall found on Google) with the name "Beeland": a market in Spillimacheen, British Columbia or a chalet in Slovenia .
Bees are a recurring topic on xkcd.
[Caption at top of panel:] (Timeline not to scale)
[A timeline is shown with two endpoints and five other points. The points are labeled:] Big Bang Rocky planets form Earth forms Ground-nesting bees evolve The Land Before Time Thymus genus diverges Now
[Below the timeline are five overlapping time periods in three rows. The text is between two thick black bars. The time periods all start and end at two different points.]
[Big Bang to Rocky Planets Form:] The Time Before Land
[Big Bang to Ground-Nesting Bees Evolve:] The Time Before bees
[Rocky Planets Form to Thymus Genus Diverges:] The Land Before Thyme
[Ground-Nesting Bees evolve to Now:] Time for Land Bees!
[Thymus Genus Diverges to Now:] Bees Land on Thyme
