488 million years ago

N
OVICIA
tart

ORD
s You
get nipped by
Anomalocaris
WAIT A
TURN Many filter
feeders
million years ago
635

EDIACARAN
Coal
First multi-celled swamps
ancestors of animals
and plants
Dry land is still
mostly barren
WAIT A TURN
Bacteria have already

million years ago

been thriving for CLIMB
billions of years AHEAD 2

444
NYA SILURIAN
...on a
NYA! Lycopod
tree

million years ago

359
CARBONIFEROUS

st
No life Oldest
1
on land yet... known
million years ago

fossil
land animal: EXTRA TURN
542

CAMBRIAN a small millipede

Early land plant

fossils
million years ago

First sizeable
First
416

animals in the SLIDE DEVONIAN

fossil record BACK Plants get bigger
trees!
- and you
slip on one! to the past
on an animal
called
GO BACK Charnia
ONE Fungi
and bacteria
help make
first soils
SLIDE BACK
SURVIVE
S
on Arthropleura, U
a six-foot millipede! First O U
birds O

D
E BUT YOU'RE

!
C SWARMING
A WITH BACTERIA!
T
E NYA NYA!
R
C

million years ago

146
million years ago
299

PERMIAN

Ice ages, first

Biggest humans
flying insect ever: X-TRA
28" wing span
TURN

23 million years ago

First grasslands

Many new flowers

and pollinators NEOGENE
million years ago
200

JURASSIC

Therapsid
(NOT a dino) HO P
Chomped on AHEAD
by T-REX! O NE
on a giant
mammal
First dino
First
years ago

mammal Mammals
million
251

TRIASSIC diversify
X-TRA
Very little diversity TURN
as life recovers
PAL

Forests
slowly
EO

recovered
GEN

Huge extinction dino-free fores

t
BACK YOU GO
E

66 million years ago

created by Hannah Bonner, Cindy Looy, Ivo Duijnstee and other members
of the ETE program of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution