Geologic Time Scale

Fossil
 Any evidence of former life
 More than fossilized remains
 Include actual or altered remains of plants and
animals
 It could also be just simple evidence of former
life (imprint of a leaf, footprint of a dinosaur,
droppings of bats)
 Early Ideas About Fossils
 Herodotus (ancient Greek historian) – among
the first to realize that fossil shells found in
rocks far from any ocean were remnants of
organisms left by a bygone sea.
 Early Ideas About Fossils (cont.)
 Aristotle could see no connection between the
shells of organisms of his time and the fossils,
which he also believed to have formed inside
the rocks.

 He also believed that living organisms could

arise by spontaneous generation from mud.
 Early Ideas About Fossils (cont.)
 Fossils were considered to be the same as
quartz crystals, or any other mineral crystals,
meaning they were either formed with Earth or
grew there later (depending on the
philosophical view of the interpreter)
 Early Ideas About Fossils (cont.)
 By the time of the Renaissance, some people
were starting to think of other fossils, too, as
the remains of former life forms
 Early Ideas About Fossils (cont.)
 By the early 1800s, by the true nature of fossils
was becoming widely accepted.
 William Smith, an English surveyor, discovered
at this time that sedimentary rock strata could
be identified by the fossils they contained.
 Smith found that each kind of sedimentary rock
had a distinctive group of fossils that was unlike
the group of fossils in other rock layers.
 Paleontology – the science of discovering
fossils, studying the fossil record, and
deciphering the history of life from fossils.

 The word paleontology was invented/coined in

1838 by the British geologist Charles Lyell
to describe his newly established branch of
geology
 Archeology – the study of past human life
and culture from material evidence of artifacts,
such as graves, buildings, tools, pottery,
landfills, and so on.

 Artifacts – literally mean “something made”

- they are not fossils
 3 Broad Ways in which Fossils
are Commonly Formed
1. Preservation or alteration of hard parts
2. Preservation of the shape
3. Preservation of signs of activity
 Types of Fossil Preservation
I. Preservation of all or part of the organism
A. Unaltered
1. Soft parts
2. Hard parts
B. Altered
1. Mineralization
2. Replacement
3. Carbon films
 Types of Fossil Preservation
(cont.)
II. Preservation of the organism’s shape
A. Cast
B. Mold
 Types of Fossil Preservation (cont.)
III. Signs of activity
A. Tracks
B. Trails
C. Burrows
D. Borings
E. Coprolites
 Reading Rocks
 Geologic time – age of the Earth
- the very long span of Earth’s history
- measured in units of millions and
billions of years
 An understanding of geologic time leads to
understanding of geologic processes, which then
leads to understanding of the environmental
conditions that must have existed in the past.
 Principle of Uniformity
 “The present is the key to the past.”
 The geologic feature that you see today have been
formed in the past by the same processes of
crustal movement, erosion, and deposition that are
observed today.
the surface of Earth has been continuously and
gradually modified over the immense span of
geologic time
Principle of Uniformity
 Principle of Original Horizontality
 Principle applied to sedimentary rocks
 Based on the observation that, on a large scale,
sediments are commonly deposited in flat-lying
layers
 Any layer of sedimentary rocks that is not
horizontal has been subjected to forces that
have deformed Earth’s surface.
Principle of Original Horizontality
 Principle of Superposition
 Applied to sedimentary rocks
 An undisturbed sequence of horizontal layers is
arranged in chronological order with the oldest
layers at the bottom
 Each consecutive layer will be younger than the
one below it (if the layers have not been turned
over by deforming forces)
Principles of Crosscutting Relationships
 Concerned with igneous and metamorphic rock,
in addition to sedimentary rock layers.
 Any geologic feature that cuts across or is
intruded into a rock mass must be younger
than the rock mass.
 Faults, folds, and igneous intrusions are always
younger than the rocks they originally occur in.
Principle of Faunal Succession
 The same type of fossil organisms that lived only a
brief geologic time should occur only in rocks that
are the same age.
 Once the basic sequence of fossil forms in the rock
record is determined, rocks can be placed in their
correct relative chronological position on the basis of
the fossils contained in them.
 If the same type of fossil organism is preserved in
two different rocks, the rocks should be the same
age.
Principle of Faunal Succession
 Dividing Time History Into Time Intervals
 Geologists have divided Earth's history into a series of
time intervals.
 These time intervals are not equal in length like the
hours in a day.
 Instead the time intervals are variable in length.
 This is because geologic time is divided using
significant events in the history of the Earth.

 C:\Users\Angie\Downloads\geologic-time-scale.pdf
Geologic Time Scale
 Examples of Boundary "Events"
 The boundary between the Permian and Triassic is
marked by a global extinction in which a large
percentage of Earth's plant and animal species
were eliminated.

 Another example is the boundary between the

Precambrian and the Paleozoic, which is marked
by the first appearance of animals with hard parts.
 Eons
 Eons are the largest intervals of geologic time
and are hundreds of millions of years in
duration.

Example:
 Phanerozoic Eon is the most recent eon and
began more than 500 million years ago.
 Eras
 Eons are divided into smaller time intervals
known as eras.
Example:
 Phanerozoic is divided into three eras: Cenozoic,
Mesozoic and Paleozoic.
 Very significant events in Earth's history are
used to determine the boundaries of the eras.
 Periods
 Eras are subdivided into periods.
 The events that bound the periods are
widespread in their extent but are not as
significant as those which bound the eras.
Example:
 Paleozoic is subdivided into the Permian,
Pennsylvanian, Mississippian, Devonian, Silurian,
Ordovician and Cambrian periods.
 Epochs
 Finer subdivisions of time are possible, and the
periods of the Cenozoic are frequently subdivided into
epochs.
 Subdivision of periods into epochs can be done only
for the most recent portion of the geologic time scale.
 This is because older rocks have been buried deeply,
intensely deformed and severely modified by long-
term earth processes.
 As a result, the history contained within these rocks
cannot be as clearly interpreted.
Artist's conception of our
solar system's solar nebula,
the cloud of gas and dust
from which the planets
formed.
 Precambrian
 The Precambrian is the name given for the first
super eon of Earth’s history.

 The Precambrian is usually considered to have

three eons: the Hadean, the Archean and the
Proterozoic.
 Hadean Eon
 The Hadean Eon occurred 4.6 billion to 4 billion
years ago.
 It is named for the mythological Hades, an
allusion to the probable conditions of this time.
 During Hadean time, the solar system was
forming within a cloud of dust and gas known
as the solar nebula, which eventually spawned
asteroids, comets, moons and planets.
Hadean Eon
Hadean Eon
 Archean Eon
 Between 4 billion and 2.5 billion years ago, the
continental shield rock began to form.
 Approximately 70 percent of continental landmass
was formed during this time. Small “island” land
masses floated in the molten “seas.”  
 Earth had acquired enough mass to hold a reducing
atmosphere composed of methane, ammonia and
other gases.
 Water from comets and hydrated minerals
condensed in the atmosphere and fell as torrential
rain, cooling the planet and filling the first oceans
 Archean Eon
 It was early in the Archean that life first appeared on Earth.
 Our oldest fossils date to roughly 3.5 billion years ago, and
consist of bacteria microfossils. In fact, all life during the
more than one billion years of the Archean was bacterial.
 The Archean coast was home to mounded colonies of
photosynthetic bacteria called stromatolites.
 Stromatolites have been found as fossils in early Archean
rocks of South Africa and western Australia.
 Stromatolites increased in abundance throughout the
Archean, but began to decline during the Proterozoic. They
are not common today, but they are doing well in Shark
 Stromatolites

Stromatolites are laminated structures of micro- organisms which have

created layers of minerals using elements dissolved in the water in which
they live.
 Stromatolites
These two gentlemen stand
among living stromatolites in
Shark Bay, at the westernmost
point of Australia.
 Archean Eon (cont.)
 Exactly when or how it happened is unknown, but
microfossils of this time indicate that life began in the
oceans about 3.5 billion to 2.8 billion years ago.
 It is probable that these microscopic prokaryotes
began as chemoautotrophs, anaerobic bacteria able to
obtain carbon from carbon dioxide (CO2).
 By the end of the Archean, the ocean floor was
covered in a living mat of bacterial life.
Archean Eon
Archean Eon
 Proterozoic Eon
 The Proterozoic Eon is also called the Cryptozoic ("age
of hidden life"). About 2.5 billion years ago, enough
shield rock had formed to start recognizable geologic
processes such as plate tectonics.
 Geology was about to be joined by biology to continue
Earth’s progress from a molten hell to a living planet.
 It is generally accepted that different types of
prokaryotic organisms formed symbiotic relationships.
 Proterozoic Eon (cont.)
 As time went on the symbiotic relationship
became permanent and the “energy
conversion” components became the
chloroplasts and mitochondria of the first
eukaryotic cells.
 Microfossils of these early cells are called
Acritarchs.
 Proterozoic Eon (cont.)
 About 1.2 billion years ago, plate tectonics forced the
available shield rock to collide, forming Rodinia (a
Russian term meaning “mother land”), Earth’s first
super continent.
 Rodinia’s coastal waters were filled with rounded
colonies of photosynthetic algae known as stromatolites.
 Photosynthesis began to add oxygen to the atmosphere,
putting pressure on organisms adapted to the reduction
atmosphere of the early Earth.
 Proterozoic Eon (cont.)
 After a brief ice age in the mid-Proterozoic, organisms
underwent rapid differentiation.
 The Ediacaran Period , the last of the Proterozoic Era, saw
the first multicellular organisms.
 Autotrophs and soft-bodied heterotrophs filled the
continental shelf regions around Rodinia.
 Many were Cnidarians similar to small jellyfish with radial
body symmetry and specialized cells to sting prey and
convey it into the body cavity.
 Fossils show that significantly different populations
inhabited different localities.
Proterozoic Life Forms
Life Forms in the Cambrian Period
Life Forms in the Ordovician Period
Life Forms in the Silurian Period
Life Forms in the Devonian Period
 The Carboniferous Period
 Began 354 million years ago, lasted for about 64
million years, until 290 million years ago.
 The name “Carboniferous” came from the large
amounts of carbon-bearing coal that was formed
during the period.
 In the United States, the Carboniferous is
divided into two epochs. The Mississipian Epoch
is the older third and the Pennsylvanian Epoch is
the more recent two-thirds.
 The Carboniferous Period (cont.)
 Shifting continents create mountains as Pangea is
born. (began forming about 300 million years ago, was fully
together by 270 million years ago and began to separate
around 200 million years ago)
 Invertebrates contribute to the formation of limestone
 More of the land was exposed to the air at this time.
Both plants and animals had to adapt to the changing
habitat.
 The Carboniferous Period (cont.)
 New plants developed in the warm, humid climate and
swampy conditions of this period.
 Large trees covered with bark and huge ferns grew in the
middle Carboniferous swamps.
 The plants gave off so much oxygen that the air had much
more oxygen in it.
 This allowed plants and animals to reach sizes that are not
known in today’s atmosphere.
 When the huge trees and ferns died, they fell into waters that
did not have bacteria to help them decompose.
 These plants formed peat beds. Eventually, with the weight of
layers and layers, these peat beds turned to coal.
Life Forms in the Carboniferous Period
Life Forms in the Permian Period
 Mesozoic Era
 Had a lot of “firsts” – first birds, first mammals,
first dinosaurs, and first flowering plants
 Significant era for evolution, climate and
tectonic activity
 Pangaea stated rifting into separate continents
from one giant landmass
Life Forms in the Triassic Period
Life Forms in the Triassic Period
(cont.)
Life Forms in the Jurassic Period
Life Forms in the Jurassic Period
(cont.)
Life Forms in the Cretaceous Period
Life Forms in the Cretaceous
Period (cont.)
Life Forms in the Cenozoic Era
Cenozoic Era: The Age of the Mammals
Cenozoic Era: The Age of the Mammals (cont.)
 Mass Extinctions
 In the last 500 million years, life has had to
recover from five catastrophic blows.
 Are humans dealing the planet a sixth?
 More than 99 percent of all organisms that have
ever lived on Earth are extinct.
 As new species evolve to fit ever changing
ecological niches, older species fade away.
 But the rate of extinction is far from constant.
 Mass Extinctions (cont.)
 At least a handful of times in the last 500
million years, 75 to more than 90 percent of all
species on Earth have disappeared in a
geological blink of an eye in catastrophes we
call mass extinctions.
 Mass Extinctions (cont.)
 Though mass extinctions are deadly events,
they open up the planet for new forms of life to
emerge.
 The most studied mass extinction, which
marked the boundary between the Cretaceous
and Paleogene periods about 66 million years
ago, killed off the nonavian dinosaurs and made
room for mammals and birds to rapidly diversify
and evolve.
 Ordovician-Silurian extinction - 444 mya
 The Ordovician period, from 485 to 444 million years
ago, was a time of dramatic changes for life on Earth.
 Over a 30-million-year stretch, species diversity
blossomed, but as the period ended, the first known
mass extinction struck.
 At that time, massive glaciation locked up huge
amounts of water in an ice cap that covered parts of
a large south polar landmass.
 Ordovician-Silurian extinction
(cont.)
 The icy onslaught may have been triggered by the rise of
North America’s Appalachian Mountains.
 The large-scale weathering of these freshly uplifted rocks
sucked carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and
drastically cooled the planet.
 As a result, sea levels plummeted by hundreds of feet.
Creatures living in shallow waters would have seen their
habitats cool and shrink dramatically, dealing a major
blow.
 Late Devonian extinction - 383-359 mya
 Starting 383 million years ago, this extinction
event eliminated about 75 percent of all
species on Earth over a span of roughly 20
million years.
 It’s been hard to nail down the cause for the
late Devonian extinction pulses, but volcanism
is a possible trigger
Devonian Extinction
 References
Geologic Time Scale. Accessed on November 3, 2019 from https://
geology.com/time.htm
Bagley, Mary (2016). Precambrian: Facts About the Beginning of Time. Accessed
on November 9, 2019 from https://
www.livescience.com/43354-precambrian-time.html
The Archean Eon and the Hadean. Accessed on November 9, 2019 from https://
ucmp.berkeley.edu/precambrian/archean_hadean.php
Proterozoic Eon: Eukaryotes to Multicellular Life (2500 to 541 million years ago).
Accessed on November 8, 2019 from https://earthhow.com/proterozoic-eon/
The Mesozoic Era: The Age of Reptiles, Dinosaurs and Conifers. Accessed on
November 9, 2019 from https://earthhow.com/mesozoic-era/
The Carboniferous Period: Plants Cover the Earth. Accessed on November 10,
2019 from https://www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com/carboniferous_period.html
The History of the Super Continent Pangaea. Accessed on November 10, 2019
from https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-pangea-1435303
Greshko, Michael and National Geographic Staff. What are Mass Extinctions?
And What Causes Them? Accessed on November 21, 2019 from
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/mass-extinction
/