Geologic Timescale

  • Cambrian Period 570-500 MYA

    Cambrian Period 570-500 MYA
    Earliest Marine Life recorded. Abundant amount of Trilobites.
  • Ordovidian 500-435 MYA

    Ordovidian 500-435 MYA
    This is where the inverterbrates animals which replaced.
  • Silurian 435-395 MYA

    Silurian 435-395 MYA
    The high sea levels and warm shallow continental seas provided a hospitable environment for marine life of all kinds. The biota and ecological dynamics were basically still similar to that of the Ordovician, but was more diverse.
  • Devonian 395-345 MYA

    Devonian 395-345 MYA
    Sea ammonids and fish evolve and quickly diversify. On land trees and forests appear for the first time. The first insects, spiders, and tetrapods evolve.
  • Carboniferous 345-280 MYA

    Carboniferous 345-280 MYA
    These ancient continents were destined to drift together and collide, forming the supercontinent of Pangaea during the Permian Period. Major continents of the Carboniferous included Gondwana, Laurentia, Baltica, and Siberia. Gondwana was the largest land mass, comprising what would later fragment to become modern South America, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica. This massive continent lay entirely within the southern hemisphere, covering a vast area including the South Pole.
  • Permian 280-225 MYA

    Permian 280-225 MYA
    Permian rocks contain a rich fossil record. On land, seed ferns were joined by conifers and ginkgos as important members of the flora. Amphibians were declining in number, but reptiles, which had appeared in the preceding period, were undergoing a spectacular evolutionary development of carnivorous and herbivorous mammal-like forms. Also during the Permian Period the forerunners of the dinosaurs appeared. For the most part, the invertebrate marine life during the Early Permian was exceptionally
  • Triassic 225-195 MYA

    Triassic 225-195 MYA
    Where dinosaurs are the earliest and abundant cyads and conifers
  • Jurassic 195-136 MYA

    Jurassic 195-136 MYA
    Earliest birds and mammals abundant dinosaurs and ammonites
  • Cretaceous 136-65 MYA

    Cretaceous 136-65 MYA
    The earliest flowering plants, climax of dinosaurs followed by their extinction. Great decline of brachipods. Abundance of bony fish.
  • Tertiary 65-1.8 MYA

    Tertiary 65-1.8 MYA
    The earliest Placental Mammals, modern Mammals, large running Mammals
  • Quaternary 1.8-Present

    Quaternary 1.8-Present
    Large Canivores, Neanderthals, Humans, Mastodons