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The earliest Hadean had an extreme silicate and water
vapour greenhouse, and a molten crust, which solidified in
∼10 My. We suggest Hephaestean (∼4.5 to 4.4 Ga) for the
lower Palaeohadean (Hephaestus, the Olympian god of fire
and blacksmith for the gods). For the upper Palaeohadean
(4.4 to 4.3 Ga) we suggest the Jacobian after Australia’s Jack
Hills, which yield the earliest zircons. For the lower Meso-
hadean (4.3 to 4.2 Ga) we suggest the Canadian period, as
crustal material dated back to 4.28 Ga is found in the Cana-
dian Shield (O’Neil et al., 2008). For the upper Meso-
hadean, we suggest Procrustean (4.2 to 4.1 Ga) from Pro-
crustes, whose bed fitted all life. As the lower Neohadean
period (4.1 to 4.0 Ga), we suggest Acastan, after the 4.03 Ga
Acasta Gneiss. From ∼4.0 to ∼3.8 Ga, the Late Heavy Bom-
bardment saw the Earth and Moon struck by many asteroids
great and small, the largest of which would have vapourised
the ocean and exterminated any pre-existing life. Accord-
Fig. 1. Proposed time scale for the Solar System formation and the ingly, we name the upper Neohadean period Promethean.
early Earth. Zeus vented his fury on Prometheus by bombarding the
Earth (Aeschylus Prometheus Bound tr. P. Vellacott, closing
speech):
We suggest two Chaotian eras, each era with two periods
“The Earth rocks: thunder, echoing from the depth,
(Fig. 1). The Eochaotian begins when the Solar Nebula be-
roars in answer; fiery lightnings twist and flash. . .
came a closed system with respect to the rest of the giant
Sky and sea rage indistinguishably,
molecular cloud and encompasses the agglomeration of the
The cataclysm advances visibly upon me,
Solar System constituents from the nebula. It includes the
sent by Zeus to make afraid.”
Nephelean Period, for the cloud that is the nebula, and the
Erebrean Period (Erebus, darkness) for the proto-Sun, yet Current theory suggests the Late Heavy Bombardment was
to be luminous. The Neochaotian Era begins with the first caused by the orbits of Jupiter (Zeus) and Saturn moving
light from the Sun. Its periods are the Hyperitian (the Ti- through a 2:1 resonance, providing the force to move the as-
tan Sun god Hyperion) for the time when gravitational col- teroids into the inner solar system (Gomes et al., 2005).
lapse made the Sun’s first light brighter than its subsequent Whilst we have used ages to demarcate periods here, we
main sequence (Sackmann et al., 1993), followed by the Ti- are firmly of the belief that boundaries should correspond to
tanomachean (the war of Titans), to encompass the collision specific events in Earth’s history (as previously expressed by
of proto-planets to form our present set of planets. Nisbet, 1991). We hope that future work will tie our proposed
Events and material from before the nebula are boundaries to specific events, or modify the periods to be
Prenephelean. We recommend that this term replace “preso- bounded by key events yet to become apparent.
lar” for meteorite grains that formed before the nebula (Nit- The Hadean-Archean boundary is undefined. Nisbet
tler, 2003), in contrast to within the nebula but before the (1982, 1991) suggested the origin of life but the timing of
Sun. Subdivision of Prenephelean time is beyond the scope this is as yet unknown. The Late Heavy Bombardment seems
of this paper and in the domain of astronomy. intrinsically Hadean and the final impact of this would be the
The Moon-forming impactor has been named Theia (Hal- logical choice to terminate the Hadean (Zahnle et al., 2007),
liday, 2000) after the Titan mother of the Moon goddess Se- being a clearly identifiable event and heralding the start of the
lene. The proto-Earth remains unnamed. We suggest Tellus, continually habitable period. However, this is unresolved in
for the Roman Earth goddess. the terrestrial record and the 3.85 Ga rocks of Isua are com-
monly seen as Archean. A date of 3.9 Ga could be used pro-
visionally, but risks splitting the Late Heavy Bombardment
3 The Hadean across two eons.
We propose the Hadean Eon (Cloud, 1976) began after Theia Acknowledgements. C. G. was funded by a NASA postdoctoral
and Tellus collided to form the Earth-Moon system. The program fellowship. K. J. Z. was funded by the Ames Team of the
Hadean is restricted to Earth’s geology, in contrast to the NASA Astrobiology Institute. We thank Kerri Cahoy for comments
solar system wide Chaotian. We divide the eon into three on the manuscript.
eras (Palaeo-, Meso- and Neohadean) and each era into two
periods. Edited by: K. Zeigler
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