RJBF – BSBIO 2A

FIRST SEMESTER | SY 2022 – 2023

VELEZ COLLEGE
Systematics Lecture YEARS
EVENT PICTURE
AGO
Topic: Geological Timescale
Lecturer: Dr. Ruth Jovita V. Gonzales, DDM, Med Bio
Unicellular life evolves.
INTRODUCTION 3.5 Photosynthetic bacteria
billion begin to release oxygen
into the atmosphere.

Replicating molecules
3.8
(the precursors of DNA)
billion
form.

• The earliest evidence of life comes from biogenic carbon The Earth forms and is
4.6
signatures and stromatolite fossils discovered in 3.7 bombarded by
billion
billion years-old metasedimentary rocks from Western meteorites and comets
Greenland.
• In 2015, possible “remains of biotic life” were found in 4.1
billion year-old rocks in Western Australia. GEOLOGICAL TIME SCALE
• In March 2017, putative evidence of possibly the oldest
forms of life on Earth was reported in the form of fossilized
microorganisms discovered in hydrothermal vents
precipitates in the Nuvvuagittuq Belt of Quebec, Canada,
that may have lived as early 4.18 billion years ago, and not
long after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago.

WHAT IS HISTORY OF LIFE?

• The evolutionary history of life on Earth traces the

processes by which living, and fossil organisms evolved,
from the earliest emergence of life to the present.
• These currently living species represent less than one
percent of all species that have ever lived on earth.

WHAT DOES EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY MEAN?

• Long before the earth’s age was known, geologists
divided its history into a table of succeeding events based
• The evolutionary history of life on Earth traces the
on the ordered layers of sedimentary rock.
processes by which living, and fossil organisms evolved,
from the earliest emergence of life to the present. • Sedimentary rocks are laid down in layers called beds or
strata.
• The similarities among all known present-day species
o A bed is defined as a layer of rock that has a
indicate that they have diverged through the process
uniform lithology and texture.
of evolution from a common ancestor.
o Beds form by the deposition of layers of
sediment on top of each other.
WHY IS EVOLUTION IMPORTANT TO LIVING THINGS?
o The sequence of beds that
characterizes sedimentary rock is called bedding.
• Knowing the evolutionary relationships among species
• The “Law of Stratigraphy” produced a relative dating with
allows scientists to choose appropriate organisms for the
the oldest layers at the bottom and the youngest at the
study of diseases, such as HIV.
top of the sequence.
• Scientists are even using the principles of natural selection
to identify new drugs for detecting and treating diseases
LAYERS OF SEDIMENTARY ROCKS
such as cancer. century workplace.
• Sedimentary rocks are laid down in layers called beds or
WHAT IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT EVENT IN THE EVOLUTION
strata.
OF LIFE?
RJBF – BSBIO 2A
FIRST SEMESTER | SY 2022 – 2023
VELEZ COLLEGE
• A bed is defined as a layer of rock that has a uniform LAW OF LATERAL CONTINUITY
lithology and texture. • Layers of rock are continuous until they encounter other
• Beds form by the deposition of layers of sediment on top solid bodies that block their deposition or until they are
of each other. acted upon by agents that appeared after deposition took
• The sequence of beds that characterizes sedimentary place.
rocks is called bedding.

FIVE (5) SEDIMENTARY PROCESSES

1. Weathering
2. Erosion
3. Crystallization
4. Deposition
5. Faunal Succession LAW OF FAUNAL SUCCESSION
• Observation that assemblages of fossil plants and animals
THREE (3) MAIN TYPES OF SEDIMENTARY ROCKS follow or succeed each other in time in a predictable
manner, even when found in different places
1. Clastic
2. Chemical WHO IS NICOLAS STENO?
3. Organic
• Steno was the first to realize that the Earth's crust
LAWS OF STRATIGRAPHY contains a chronological history of geologic events, and
that the history may be deciphered by careful study of
• Steno’s Laws of Stratigraphy the strata and fossils.
• He rejected the idea that mountains grow like trees,
LAW OF SUPERPOSITION proposing instead that they are formed by alterations of
• Younger layers or rock sit atop older layers. the Earth's crust.

TIME WAS DIVIDED INTO

• Eons
• Eras
• Periods
• Epochs
LAW OF ORIGINAL HORIZONTALITY • Time during the last eon (Phanerozoic) is expressed in eras
• Layers of sedimentary rock are originally deposited flat. (ex. Cenozoic), periods (ex. tertiary), epochs (ex.
• Two kinds: Paleocene)
o Original Orientation
o Orientation after tilting (folding) TIMELINE OF MAJOR BIOLOGICAL EVENTS

LAW OF CROSS-CUTTING RELATIONSHIPS

• Rock layers A and B must be older than the intrusion (C)
that disturbs them.
RJBF – BSBIO 2A
FIRST SEMESTER | SY 2022 – 2023
VELEZ COLLEGE
To determine rock age, we compare the amount of radioactive
and nonradioactive isotopes.
• In the late 1940’s radiometric dating methods were
developed for determining the absolute age in years of
rock formations.
• These “radioactive clocks” are independent of pressure
and temperature changes and therefore are not affected
by often violent earth-building activities.
• The fossil record of macroscopic organisms begins near
the start of the Cambrian Period of the Paleozoic era,
approximately 542 million years BP (before the present).
• Geological time before the Cambrian is called the
Precambrian era or Proterozoic eon.
• Although the Precambrian era occupies 85% of all
geological time.
o It has received much less attention than later
eras, partly because oil, which provides the
commercial incentive for much geological work,
seldom exists in Precambrian formations.
• The Precambrian era contains well-preserved fossils of
bacteria and algae, and casts of jellyfishes, sponge
spicules, soft corals, segmented flatworms, and worm
trails. Most, but not all, are microscopic fossils.
PRECAMBRIAN ANIMALS
• Sponges
• Cnidarians (including sea anemones, corals, and
jellyfish)
• Annelids, or segmented flatworms.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GEOLOGIC TIME (YT VIDEO)
YT link: https://youtu.be/rWp5ZpJAIAE
• The tale of life on Earth has been unfolding for about 4
billion years. And we humans are just the last word on the
last page of that story.
• To help us comprehend the full expanse of time, scientists
have turned to the rocks.
• By looking at the layers beneath our feet, geologists have
been able to identify and describe crucial episodes in life’s
history—from bursts of evolutionary diversity to
disastrous extinction events.
o These key events—of new life and sudden
death—frame the chapters in the story of life on
earth.
• Geologic Time Scale – the system that we use to bind all
these chapters together.
HISTORY OF GEOLOGIC TIME SCALE (GTS)
• Figuring out how to read history in rocks was not easy.
o For much of human history, of course, we had no
idea how old the Earth was, or what actually
happened in deep time, or what happened in
what order.
NICOLAS STENO
• In 1669, Danish scientist Nicolas Steno published the first
laws of stratigraphy.
o Laws of Stratigraphy – science of interpreting the
strata, or layers of rock, in Earth’s outer surface.
RJBF – BSBIO 2A
FIRST SEMESTER | SY 2022 – 2023
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• Steno argued that the layers closer to the surface must be
younger than the layers below them.
GIOVANNI ARDUINO
• Building on Steno’s idea, Italian geologist Giovanni
Arduino went a step further and began naming the layers
of rock.
• In the 1760s, Arduino studied the Italian Alps, organizing
their layers based on their depth and composition.
LAYERS OF ROCK
Primary layer – the lowest layers of metamorphic and
volcanic rocks.
Secondary layer – above the primary layer and composed
of hard sedimentary rocks.
Tertiary and Quaternary layer – the top layers; composed
of softer alluvial deposits.
• But, because rock layers don’t appear in this same order
all over the world, there was no way for geologists to
compare rocks from one location to another.
• Without a way to compare strata, there could be no
universal time scale.
WILLIAM SMITH
• In 1819, English geologist William Smith figured out the
solution to the problem: fossils.
• By comparing the remains of ancient organisms from
different rock formations, Smith could match their ages,
regardless of how far apart they were.
GEOLOGIC TIME SCALE (GTS)
• The GTS has been reworked many times to reflect the
latest knowledge of Earth’s history.
• It is organized into five subgroups:
o Eons
o Eras
o Periods
o Epochs
o Ages
EONS
Eons are the largest slices of time, ranging from a half-billion
to nearly 2 billion years long.
HADEAN EAON (4.6 to 4 billion years ago)
• The earliest eon
• Begins with the very formation of the earth itself.
• The only eon that doesn’t have any fossils.
• Named after Hades, the Hadean lived up to its name.
o The planet was wracked by volcanic activity,
cosmic bombardments, raging storms, and
temperatures that were at times hot enough to
meal rock.
• While no fossils have been found from this eon, small
amounts of organic carbon have been discovered in
Hadean rocks that some experts think is evidence of the
earliest life.
• The Hadean was brought to an end by the cooling of the
Earth’s crust, setting the stage for continents to
eventually form.
o This cooling marked the beginning of the next
phase.
ARCHEAN EON (4 to 2.5 billion years ago)
• Named for the Greek word for “origin,” the Archean was
once thought to be when the first signs of life appeared.
• But at the very least, it’s fair to say it was the first time
that life flourished, forming mats of microbes in the
primordial seas.
• The fossils that these microbes left behind are called
stromatolites or stromatoliths. The very oldest of them
are found in western Australia.
• During this time, the atmosphere was mostly carbon
dioxide, but the appearance of cyanobacteria was about
to change all that.
PROTEROZOIC EON (2.5 billion to 54 million years ago)
• Proterozoic means “earlier life”
• Around this time, photosynthetic bacteria, along with
some multicellular forms of live, spewed tons of oxygen
into the atmosphere.
o This probably wiped out most of the anaerobic
life on Earth. But it cleared the path for crucial,
new organisms including the ancestral
eukaryotes, whose cells each have a nucleus and
organelles wrapped in membranes.
• Eukaryotes developed into the first really big, complex,
and sometimes weird forms of life, e.g., fond-like Charnia
and plate-shaped Dickinsonia.
o These new, larger organisms quickly diversified,
and by 541 million years ago, we were at the
doorstep of the next and current eon, the
Phanerozoic.
PHANEROZOIC EON (541 million years ago to present)
• Phanerozoic means “visible life”
• It was during this time when life really became obvious.
• This is the eon that’s home to trees, dinosaurs, newts,
aardvarks, and humans.
• Phanerozoic is basically life as we know it.
• Three eras in Phanerozoic Eon:
o Paleozoic Era
o Mesozoic Era
o Cenozoic Era
RJBF – BSBIO 2A
FIRST SEMESTER | SY 2022 – 2023
VELEZ COLLEGE
THREE ERAS OF PHANEROZOIC EON
PALEOZOIC ERA (541 to 252 million years ago
• This chapter was defined by the diversification of visible
life, and it started with a bang or explosion—the Cambrian
explosion.
• This fluorescence of diversity and complexity in the
world’s oceans is such a huge deal in the history of life that
all of the eons that came before it.
o The Hadean, Archean, and the Proterozoic, are
collectively known as the Precambrian.
• At the start of the Paleozoic, over about 25 million years,
the fossil record suddenly reveals the appearance of
complex animals with mineralized remains, e.g., shells,
exoskeletons, etc.
o The first of these new animals to become truly
widespread were the trilobites.
§ They were so common all over the world
that they’ve been used as index fossils
for the Paleozoic Era for centuries, ever
since the days of William Smith.
o But the trilobites soon had competition, fish
developed teeth and jaws, and came to dominate
the seas, including the first sharks and armored
giants known as placoderms.
• Meanwhile, the land, which had been barren since the
formation of continents back in the Archean, was finally
being populated—first by plants and then by arthropods.
• By 370 million years ago, entire ecosystems had
developed on the primeval continents.
• Soon after, the earliest amphibians evolved and hauled
themselves out of the water, leaving the first vertebrate
footprints in the mud.
• 299 million years ago, the supercontinent Pangea had
formed, with an enormous desert at its center.
o This desert was quickly populated by the
ancestors of what would eventually become
reptiles and mammals, which could thrive in dry
conditions, unlike amphibians.
o But this time of incredible growth couldn’t last
forever and instead, the Paleozoic Era ended in
cataclysm.
• 252 million years ago, 70% of land vertebrates and 96%
of marine species disappeared from the fossil record,
including survivors of previous extinctions, like our
friends the trilobites.
• The event, known as the Great Dying, was the most severe
extinction in our planet’s history.
o Its exact cause is still unclear.
§ A possible meteorite impact site off the
coast of South America Islands, might be
one clue.
§ And in Siberia, layers of basalt show that
massive volcanic eruptions covered
large swaths of Pangea in lava.
§ Both of these incidents coincided with
the end of the Paleozoic, and it seems
more than likely that the extinction had
many causes.
• In any case, the Paleozoic may have begun as a chapter
defined by an explosion of life, but it ended in nearly
absolute death.
• It took millions of years for life to recover, but when it did,
a new world, The Mesozoic Era, had arrived.
MESOZOIC ERA (252 to 66 million years ago)
• This often called the Age of Reptiles.
o Right from the start of the Mesozoic, reptiles
were incredibly successful.
o This is when they took some of their most famous
forms, including dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and a
variety of marine species.
• In fact, all of the non-avian dinosaurs lived only in the
Mesozoic, so they remain one of the best index fossils of
this era.
• Many modern groups of organisms also evolved in the
shadow of the reptiles, like mammals, frogs, bees, and
flowering plants.
• But the Mesozoic Era came to an end 66 million years ago,
with yet another episode of devastation, known as the
Cretaceous-Paleogene, or K-Pg, Extinction Event.
o Like all mass die-offs, the K-Pg had many causes,
but probably the biggest of them was a gigantic
asteroid that struck the earth, sending out
enormous amounts of ash into the atmosphere,
blocking out sunlight, and creating a vicious cold
snap across the planet.
o Without the sun’s energy, entire plant
communities died, and the animals that relied
on those plants perished with them.
o Evidence of this impact can be found in a layer of
iridium, in rocks dating to the end of the
Mesozoic.
§ Iridium is an element that’s rare on
Earth, but very common in asteroids
and comets.
o A giant impact crater in the Gulf of Mexico,
whose age matches the date of this extinction
has become the smoking gun for the asteroid
hypothesis.
• The victims of the K-Pg Extinction were some of the
biggest reptiles of the land, sea and sky, including all of
what we now call the non-avian dinosaurs.
• Birds survived the cataclysm, of course, making them the
last surviving lineage of the dinosaurs.
• With all of the great reptiles gone, the smaller animals that
remained were able to eke out a living in the next era, the
Cenozoic.
CENOZOIC ERA (66 million years ago to present)
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FIRST SEMESTER | SY 2022 – 2023
VELEZ COLLEGE
• It’s the era that we’re in today, and it also marks the rise
of the mammals.
• Soon after the K-Pg extinction, the climate warmed, and
jungles stretched across the planet.
o Mammals quickly recovered in this hothouse
world.
o By 40 million years ago, most of the mammal
groups that we recognize had come about, like
whales, bats, rodents, and primates.
• But, starting 34 million years ago, the climate began to
shift again.
o This time ice caps started to grow at the poles,
taking up much of the planet's water.
o These drier conditions created a new habitat, the
grassland, where ancestral horses and antelope
were first hunted by the earliest cats and dogs.
o It was also on these grassy plains 7 million years
ago that a species of ape known as
Sahelanthropus became the first known primate
to walk upright.
• 2.6 million years ago, the ice caps expanded even more,
and the Earth entered a glacial period.
o This is the one you hear referred to as The Ice
Age.
• Over the course of these last several million years, most
modern lifeforms that we know about developed and
thrived, alongside giants like mammoths, ground sloths
and saber-toothed cats.
• Once again, though, this era of lush diversity came to a
morbid end.
o Starting around 15,000 years ago, the climate
began to warm up.
o Over the next few thousand years, many of the
giant fauna went extinct.
• By 11,700 years ago, the last major glaciation was over,
and modern humans inhabited nearly all corners of the
globe.
o But how big a role we played in the extinction of
the so-called Ice Age megafauna is hotly
debated.
• Regardless, there’s no escaping the fact that our species
has shaped the Earth to its will since then.
o Like cyanobacteria, and the dinosaurs before us,
we’ve had a huge impact on habitats, other
organisms, and the biosphere itself.

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09-11-2022
RJBF – BSBIO 2A
FIRST SEMESTER | SY 2022 – 2023
VELEZ COLLEGE
Systematics Lecture NEBULA
Topic: Origin and Chemistry of Life • The pressure form this outwardly directed radiation and
Lecturer: Dr. Ruth Jovita V. Gonzales, DDM, Med Bio
prevented a collapse of the nebula into the sun.
• The material left behind cooled and eventually produced
INTRODUCTION
planets including earth.

ABIOGENIC MOLECULAR EVOLUTION

• In 1920s, Russian Biochemist Alexander Oparin and J.B.S.

Haldane independently proposed that life originated on
earth after an inconceivably long period of abiogenic
molecular evolution.
• Oparin and Haldane argued that the simplest form of life
arose gradually by the progressive assembly of small
• In ancient times, people commonly thought that life arose molecules into more complex organic molecules.
repeatedly by spontaneous generation from the non- • Molecules capable of self-replication eventually would be
living material in addition to parental reproduction produced, ultimately leading to the assembly of living
• Example microorganisms.
o Frogs appear to arise from damp earth
o Mice from putrefied matter
o Insects from dew
o Maggots from decaying meat
• Factors that Encouraged Spontaneous Generation
o Warmth
o Moisture
o Sunlight
o Starlight

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

• All living organisms share a common ancestor ATOMS

• Most likely a population of microorganisms that lived
almost 4 billion years ago was the last universal common • It comes from the Greek word Atomas which means
ancestor of life on earth indivisible.
• This common ancestor was itself the product of a long • The smallest
period of prebiotic assembly of nonliving matter including particle into which
organic molecules and water to form self-replicating units an element can be
• All living organisms retain a fundamental chemical broken down and
still retain the
composition inherited from their ancient common
properties of that
ancestor
element.
THE FORMATION OF THE UNIVERSE
STRUCTURE OF ATOMS
• According to the Big Bang Model, the universe originated Proton – a positively charged subatomic particle found in
from a primeval fireball, and has been expanding and the nucleus of an atom
cooling since its inception 10 to 20 billion years ago.
• The sun and planet formed approximately 4.6 billion Neutron – a subatomic particle without any electrical
years ago from a spherical cloud of cosmic dust and charge found in the nucleus of an atom
gases.
• The cloud collapsed under its own gravity into a rotating Electron – a negatively charged subatomic particle that
disc. orbits the nucleus of an atom
• As material in the central part of the disc condensed to
form the sun, gravitational energy was released as Atomic nucleus – the central core of an atom containing
radiation. protons and neutrons
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FIRST SEMESTER | SY 2022 – 2023
VELEZ COLLEGE
MOLECULES

• A cluster of two or more atoms held together by specific

chemical bonds.
• Some examples of these are oxygen molecule, water
molecule, salt molecule, and sugar molecule (glucose).

HOW DO ATOMS FORM MOLECULES?

• The atoms of life – carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are
joined in tens of thousands of combinations to form the
molecules in your food, in other animals and plants and
your body.

ELEMENTS

• A pure substance that cannot be broken down into

simpler substances by chemical means.
• Chemists discovered 118 elements—89 occur in nature
and the rest are created by scientists in the laboratory.

CHEMICAL BOND

• An attractive force that keeps atoms together in a

molecule.
• Atoms make bonds to fill their outer electron orbit.

TYPES OF CHEMICAL BONDS

Covalent Bond • A form of molecular bonding
characterized by the sharing of a
pair of electrons between atoms
• It has a goal to achieve a set of 8
valence electrons
Hydrogen Bond • A type of weak molecular bond in
which a partially negatively
charged atom bonds with the
partial positive charge on a
hydrogen atom when the hydrogen
atom is already participating in a
covalent bond

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09-15-2022
RJBF – BSBIO 2A
FIRST SEMESTER | SY 2022 – 2023
VELEZ COLLEGE
Systematics Lecture • Carbon has a great ability to bond with other carbon
atoms in chains of varying lengths and configurations
Topic: Organic Molecules
• Carbon-to-carbon combination introduces the possibility
Lecturer: Dr. Ruth Jovita V. Gonzales, DDM, Med Bio
of enormous complexity and variety into molecule
structure
WATER AND LIFE
• Chemists have identified more than a million organic
compounds
• The origin and maintenance of life on earth depend
critically on water.
CARBOHYDRATES
• Water is the most abundant of all compounds in cells –
forming 60% to 90% of most living organisms.
• Nature’s most abundant organic substance
• Water has several extraordinary properties that explain
• Carbohydrates are composed primarily of carbon,
each essential role in living systems and their origins.
hydrogen, and oxygen.
• Hydrogen bonds that form between adjacent water
• The simplest form of carbohydrates are sugars, which are
molecules underlie these properties.
served as immediate source of energy in living systems.
o Monosaccharide or simple sugars may bond
PROPERTIES OF WATER
together to form disaccharides or
polysaccharides which then serve as storage
The unique structure of water and its ability to form hydrogen
forms of sugar of perform structural roles.
bonds between adjacent water molecules are responsible for
• Glucose is the most important of these energy-storing
its special properties. The following properties of water are:
carbohydrates. Examples of glucose are sugars, starches,
and cellulose.
1. High specific heat capacity
2. High heat of vaporization
3. Unique density behavior FUNCTIONS OF CARBOHYDRATES
4. High surface tension Mainly the structural elements in protoplasm
5. Low viscosity
6. Excellent solvent Source of chemical energy

ORGANIC MOLECULES
THREE CLASSES OF CARBOHYDRATES

Monosaccharides – known as simple sugars

Disaccharides – known as double sugars and it is formed

when monosaccharides or simple sugars bond together

Polysaccharides – known as complex sugars which performs

structural growths

LIPIDS

• Aside from water, life also depends critically on the
chemistry of carbon.
• Chemical evolution in a prebiotic environment produced
simple organic compounds that ultimately formed the
building blocks of living cells.
• The term organic refers broadly to compounds that
contain carbon.
o It may also contain hydrogen, oxygen,
nitrogen, sulfur, salts, and others.
• Carbon is versatile because it can bond with itself and
with other carbon atoms.
• Carbon is the only element capable of forming the large
molecules found in living organisms.
• Fuel storage and building material
• Lipids are fats and fatlike substances.
• These constitute another class of large molecules
featuring chains of carbon compounds and fats that exist
principally as triglycerides, phospholipids, and steroids
THREE PRINCIPAL GROUPS
Triglycerides – also known as “true fats” and these are
major fuels of animals
Phospholipids
Steroids
RJBF – BSBIO 2A
FIRST SEMESTER | SY 2022 – 2023
VELEZ COLLEGE
AMINO ACIDS

• Amino acids are linked by peptide bonds to form long,

chainlike polymers.
• Amino acids make up proteins.

PROTEINS

• Proteins are large, complex molecules composed of 20

kinds of amino acids.
• It is not just a long string of amino acids, but they are
highly organized molecules.
• Many proteins function as enzymes that catalyze
biological reactions.
• Each kind of protein has a characteristic primary,
secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structure critical for
its functioning.

FOUR LEVELS OF PROTEIN ORGNIZATION

• Primary
• Secondary
• Tertiary
• Quaternary structures

NUCLEIC ACIDS

• These are polymers of nucleotide units.

• Each nucleic acid is composed of a sugar, nitrogenous
base, and phosphate group.
• They contain the materials of inheritance and function in
protein synthesis.
• Nucleic acids are complex polymeric molecules whose
sequence of nitrogenous bases encodes the genetic
information necessary for biological inheritance.

TWO KINDS OF NUCLEIC ACIDS

• DNA – deoxyribonucleic acid
• RNA – ribonucleic acid

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09-16-2022
RJBF – BSBIO 2A
FIRST SEMESTER | SY 2022 – 2023
VELEZ COLLEGE
Systematics Lecture and cephalopods, are common in the
oceans.
Topic: Important Events in the History of Life
Lecturer: Dr. Ruth Jovita V. Gonzales, DDM, Med Bio
555 MILLION Multi-cellular marine organisms are
common. The diverse assortment of life
IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF LIFE
includes bizarre-looking animals
like Wiwaxia.
YEARS AGO EVENT/S
130,000 Anatomically modern humans evolve.
3.5 BILLION Unicellular life evolves. Photosynthetic
Seventy thousand years later, their
bacteria begin to release oxygen into the
descendants create cave paintings — early
atmosphere.
expressions of consciousness.
3.8 BILLION Replicating molecules (the precursors of
4 MILLION In Africa, an early hominid, affectionately
DNA) form.
named "Lucy" by scientists, lives. The ice
ages begin, and many large mammals go
4.6 BILLION The Earth forms and is bombarded by
extinct.
meteorites and comets.
65 MILLION A massive asteroid hit the Yucatan
Peninsula, and ammonites and non-avian
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dinosaurs go extinct. Birds and mammals
are among the survivors.
09-16-2022
130 MILLION As the continents drift toward their
present positions, the earliest flowers
evolve, and dinosaurs dominate the
landscape. In the sea, bony fish diversify.

225 MILLION Dinosaurs and mammals evolve. Pangea

has begun to break apart.

248 MILLION Over 90% of marine life and 70% of

terrestrial life go extinct during the Earth's
largest mass extinction. Ammonites are
among the survivors.

250 MILLION The supercontinent called Pangea forms.

Conifer-like forests, reptiles, and synapsids
(the ancestors of mammals) are common.

360 MILLION Four-limbed vertebrates move onto the

land as seed plants and large forests
appear. The Earth's oceans support vast
reef systems

420 MILLION Land plants evolve, drastically changing

Earth's landscape and creating new
habitats.

450 MILLION Arthropods move onto the land. Their

descendants evolve into scorpions, spiders,
mites, and millipedes.

500 MILLION Fish-like vertebrates evolve. Invertebrates,

such as trilobites, crinoids, brachiopids,