What you are referring to are the controls for when a feature is being followed. Following a feature is initiated from an element or selector via the Follow Feature action. In this case, it was used to simply draw users' attention to the earthquake (as the epicenter doesn't move).
A date/time slider in dashboards is not supported at this time.
"Note: To control the scale to which it zooms (i.e., level of detail), configure the map element and update the Point Zoom Scale property. In this dashboard I used 50,000,000. Make sure to enter the number without commas."
Where is this property? I can't find it and the map element page linked to doesn't mention it.