| Period | Millions of Years Ago | Life Forms | |||
| P H A N E R O Z O I C |
Ceneozoic | Quaternary | Holocene | 10,000 years ago | Man, flourishing of mammals, Ice Age |
| Pleistocene | 2.6 | ||||
| Tertiary | Pliocene | 5-2.5 | First hominids, horses, caninetapirs, rodents | ||
| Miocene | 23-5 | ||||
| Oligocene | 33-23 | ||||
| Eocene | 54-33 | ||||
| Paleocene | 65-24 | ||||
| Mesozoic | Cretaceous | 146-65 | marine invertebrates, marsupials, pterosaurs | ||
| Jurassic | 208-146 | Suaropods, birds, flowering plants | |||
| Triassic | 248-248 | First mammals, turtles, ichtyosaur, first dinosaurs, flying reptiles | |||
| Paleozoic | Permian | 280-248 | More abundance of amphibians and reptiles | ||
| Pennsylvanian (Carboniferous) | 325-280 | First reptiles, ferns, cockroaches | |||
| Mississippian | 360-325 | First-winged insects | |||
| Devonian | 408-360 | Fish, sharks, first amphibians, and land plants | |||
| Silurian | 438-408 | First-jawed fishes, first insects, first plants | |||
| Ordovician | 505-438 | First primitive plants, corals, fungi, primitive fish | |||
| Cambrian | 575-500 | Trilobites, mollusks, brachiopods, algae | |||
 |
Proterozoic | Late Pre-Cambrian | 575 | ||
| Archeozoic | Early Pre-cambrian | 2,500 | |||
Geological Time Table
Geological Time Table
Return to Dictionary of…
Theology // Philosophy // Science // People // False Terms