Table 1–1 • THE GEOLOGIC TIME SCALE

TIME UNITS OF THE GEOLOGIC TIME SCALE

Eon Era Period Epoch DISTINCTIVE PLANTS AND ANIMALS

Recent or Humans
Holocene
Quaternary 0.011

“Age of Mammals”
Pleistocene
2.58
Cenozoic Era

Pliocene
Neogene 5.3
Miocene Mammals develop
23 and become dominant
Tertiar

Oligocene
40
Paleogene Eocene
(Phaneros ⫽ “evident”; Zoon ⫽ “life”)

56 Extinction of dinosaurs and

Paleocene many other species
66
First flowering plants, greatest
Cretaceous
Mesozoic Era
Phanerozoic Eon

development of dinosaurs

Reptiles”
145

“Age of
First birds and mammals,
Jurassic abundant dinosaurs
201
Triassic First dinosaurs
252
Extinction of trilobites and many
Permian
Amphibians”

other marine animals3

300
“Age of
Carboniferous

Great coal forests; abundant

Pennsylvanian insects, first reptiles
323
Paleozoic Era

Mississippian Large primitive trees

359
“Age of
Fishes”

Devonian First amphibians

419
Silurian First land plant fossils
443
Invertebrates”

Ordovician First fish

“Age of

485
Marine

First organisms with shells,

Cambrian trilobites dominant
541

First multicelled organisms

First one-celled organisms

Approximate age of oldest rocks

Hadean Origin of the Earth
4600⫾

Time is given in millions of years (for example, 1000 stands for 1000 million, which is one billion). The
table is not drawn to scale. We know relatively little about events that occurred during the early part of the
Earth’s history. Therefore, the first four billion years are given relatively little space on this chart, while the
more recent Phanerozoic Eon, which spans only 538 million years, receives proportionally more space.