Geologic Time Scale

The geologic time scale is a chronologic schema (or idealized Model ) relating stratigraphy to time that is used by geologists and other earth scientists to describe the timing and relationships between events that have occurred during the history of Earth. The table of geologic time spans presented here agrees with the dates and nomenclature proposed by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, and uses the standard color codes of the United States Geological Survey.

Evidence from radiometric dating indicates that the Earth is about 4.570 billion years old. The geological or deep time of Earth's past has been organized into various units according to events which took place in each period. Different spans of time on the time scale are usually delimited by major geological or paleontological events, such as mass extinctions. For example, the boundary between the Cretaceous period and the Paleogene period is defined by the extinction event, known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, that marked the demise of the dinosaurs and of many marine speciess. Older periods which predate the reliable fossil record are defined by absolute age.

The largest defined unit of time is the supereon, composed of eons. Eons are divided into eras, which are in turn divided into periods, epochs and ages. The terms eonothem, erathem, system, series and stage are used to refer to the layers of rock that correspond to these periods of geologic time.

Geologist tend to talk in terms of Upper/Late, Lower/Early and Middle parts of periods and other units , such as "Upper Jurassic", and "Middle Cambrian". Upper, Middle, and Lower are terms applied to the rocks themselves, as in "Upper Jurassic sandstone", while Late, Middle, and Early are applied to time, as in "Early Jurassic deposition" or "fossils of Early Jurassic age." The adjectives are capitalized when the subdivision is formally recognized, and lower case when not; thus "early Miocene" but "Early Jurassic." Because geologic units occurring at the same time but from different parts of the world can often look different and contain different fossils, there are many examples where the same period was historically given different names in different locales. For example, in North America the Lower Cambrian is referred to as the Waucoban series that is then subdivided into zones based on trilobites. The same timespan is split into Tommotian,Atdabanian and Botomian stages in East Asia and Siberia. A key aspect of the work of the International Commission on Stratigraphy is to reconcile this conflicting terminology and define universal horizons that can be used around the world. Source from Wikipedia