THE GEOLOGICAL TIME SCALE

Introduction to Geological Time

As humans it may be difficult to appreciate time beyond that of one or two generations let alone
hundreds, thousands, millions and billions of years.
Unraveling time and the earth's biologic history are arguably geology's most important
contributions to humanity. Students can catch a glimpse of our rich geologic heritage by studying
the table below. Since most of our teaching is done in a classroom and not in a field setting, it
maybe very important for students to memorize the major components of the time scales.

Some Important Dates (subject to revision by various scholars) in the History of the Earth:
Millions of Event
Years Ago
4600 Origin of the Earth
3900 Oldest Dated Crustal Rocks
3800 Oldest Evidence for Life
2000 First Oxygen Atmosphere/Ozone Layer Forms
900 Oldest Metazoan Fossils
510 Oldest Fossil Fish
458 First Land Plants
375 That important first step: Amphibians Evolve
245 Huge Mass Extinction at End of Permian Period/ Close of the Paleozoic
Era
200 First Mammals
160 First Birds
145 Atlantic Ocean first opens
130 Angiosperms (Flowering Plants) on the Scene
65 Adaptive Radiation of Mammals/Dinosaurs Go Extinct/ Close of the
Mesozoic Era/Beginning of the Cenozoic Era
3.4 New discoveries of (LUCY)Australopithecus afarensis fossils from
Ethiopia--Males and females show sexual dimorphism
2 Pleistocene Ice Age begins/Light from the Andromeda galaxy seen today
left Andromeda 2 x 106 years ago!
.600 Age of Homo erectus fossils from Ethiopia
.100 Homo sapiens appears in the fossil record
.000503 Columbus lands in New World
?? Your Birthday

Over the past 150 years detailed studies of rocks throughout the world based on stratigraphic,
paleontological and correlation studies have allowed geologist to correlate rock units throughout
the world and break them into time stratigraphic units. Geologists developed the geologic time
scale as a means to recognize and express time in numbers of years. This time scale was
developed gradually, mostly in Europe, over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The result
is the geologic column, which breaks relative geologic time into units of known relative age.

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This geological column is just an idea, not an actual series of rock layers (Parker, 2001).
Nowhere do we find the complete sequence, but still the geological column does represent a
tendency for fossils to be found in groups and those groups to be found in a certain vertical
order. (Note that the geologic column was established and fairly known before geologists had a
means of determining absolute ages. Thus, the absolute ages were not known until recently).

The geological column consists of layers of rock drawn with the oldest rocks at the bottom. The
column is supposed to represent a vertical cross-section through the earth’s crust, with the most
recently deposited (therefore youngest) rocks at the surface and the oldest, earliest rocks
deposited on the crystalline “basement” rocks at the bottom

The rocks that contain identifiable fossils are divided into eras, named according to the
presumption of evolution and the idea that depth indicates age.

The oldest era of distinct fossil life is called Paleozoic (meaning "ancient life"), followed by
Mesozoic ("middle life"), and finally by Cenozoic ("recent life").

Notice the belief in a succession of life forms. Eras are divided into periods, named for the
geographical regions where they were first found and studied. The periods are further divided
into epochs, but we usually hear of named epochs only in the most recent Cenozoic era. The
Earth's history is subdivided into eons, which are subdivided into eras, which are subdivided into
periods, which are subdivided into epochs. The names of these subdivisions, like Paleozoic or
Cenozoic.

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THE RELATIVE TIME SCALE

The Geological Time Scale

The addition of numerical ages to the geological column has resulted in the geologic time scale.
The Geological time scale is divided into four eons namely Phanerozoic, Proterozoic, Archaean
and Hadean. (Eons are the largest intervals of geologic time and are hundreds of millions of
years in duration). The Phanerozoic Eon is the most recent eon and began more than 500 million
years ago and the oldest is the Hadean.

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The name "Hadean" is derived from Hades which is Greek for "Underworld," or “unseen”
referring to the conditions on Earth at the time. It is commonly thought that the Hadean
landscape was a lava-filled, meteorite-bombarded, lifeless place, a scenario believed to be
somewhat exaggerated by some scientists. The scholars believe that the Earth wasn’t as hellish
as some might think at least around the end of the Hadean eon. The fact is that there is no
evidence about the conditions on Earth at that time, relative to any other eon. However, the
beginning of the Hadean eon was certainly a harsh place.

Achaean Eon

 means “old”.
 The Achaean Eon is the second geologic eon in the Earth's history, beginning at the end
of the Hadean Eon 3800 million years ago (mya) and extending to the start of the
Proterozoic Eon 2500 mya.
 Some of the world's oldest rocks date back to the Achaean, or even before, in the Hadean.
 According to geologists, only 5-40% of the current continental crust formed during the
Achaean. Volcanic activity would have been much greater than it is today.

Proterozoic Eon

 means “early life”.

 The Proterozoic Eon is the third eon and extends from 2500 million to approximately
570 million years ago.
 The Proterozoic makes up more than half of the history of life on earth.
 Even fossil details from the Proterozoic are very sketchy.
 The early portion of the era was dominated, perhaps exclusively, by single-celled
photosynthetic organisms which are the descendents of today’s cyanobacteria.
 The Proterozoic, Achaean and Hadean eons constitute what is known as the Precambrian
(“before Cambrian”).
 The Precambrian comprises about 88% of geologic time (4 500 million years).
 It is not divided into smaller time units because the events of Precambrian history are not
known in great enough detail.
 First abundant fossil evidence does not appear until the beginning of the Cambrian.

The Phanerozoic Eon

 is a geologic time division that extends from roughly 570 million years ago until the
present.
 The name derives from Greek and means “revealed life,” because the Phanerozoic Eon is
defined as the period of time during which hard-shelled macroscopic multicellular
organisms existed.
 The Phanerozoic eon is divided into three eras: Cenozoic, Mesozoic and Paleozoic. In
Greek, these terms mean: early life, middle life, and recent life.

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 The eras are separated from one another by massive extinctions.
 Although it only encompasses about 10% of the Earth’s total age, it is throughout the
Phanerozoic Eon that the life with which we are familiar evolved and covered the planet.
 Prior to the Phanerozoic, the only living things were numerous unicellular organisms and
some blob-like and disc-like early multicellular organisms called the Ediacaran biota.
 The Phanerozoic Eras are subdivided into Periods.
 The events that bound the periods are wide-spread in their extent but are not as
significant as those which bound the eras.
 The Paleozoic era is subdivided into the Permian, Pennsylvanian, Mississippian,
Devonian, Silurian, Ordovician and Cambrian periods.
 The Periods known in North America as the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian are
referred to as the Early Carboniferous and Late Carboniferous Epochs by Europeans.
 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.
 Each subdivision of the Time Scale is based on a type section or stratotype, a particular
section of rocks with particular fossil characteristics that define that interval of time.

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 Eon Era Period Epoch Age (my) Age of Notes
Holocene Humans
Quaternary 0-2
Pleistocene
Pliocene 2-5
Cenozoic Miocene 5-24
(“recent Mammals
life”) Oligocene 24-37
Tertiary
Eocene 37-58
Extinction of
Paleocene 58-66
dinosaurs
Flowering
Cretaceous 66-144
plants
Mesozoic
1st birds &
(“middle Jurassic 144-208 Reptiles
mammals
life”)
Phanerozoic
(Visible life)

First
Triassic 208-245
Dinosaurs
End of
Permian 245-286
trilobites

Pennsylvanian 286-320 Amphibians First reptiles

Carboniferous:
Large
Mississippian 320-360
Paleozoic primitive trees
(“ancient First
life) Devonian 360-408
amphibians
Fishes
First land
Silurian 408-438
plant fossils
Ordovician 438-505 First Fish

Invertebrates 1st shells,

Cambrian 505-570 trilobites
dominant
570- 2 500 1st multi-
Proterozoic
(Early life)

celled
organisms
PRECAMBRIAN

2 500- 3 800 1st one celled

Archaean

organisms

3 800- 4 600 Origin of

earth.
Hadean

Approximate
age of oldest
rocks 4 280

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Relative age
Relative means that we can determine if something is younger than or older than something else.
Relative does not tell how old something is, all we know is the sequence of events. For example:
the sandstone in this area is older than limestone. Principles of Stratigraphy are used to determine
relative ages of events.
Absolute age
Absolute age means that we can more or less precisely assign a number (in years, minutes,
seconds some other units of time) to the amount of time that has passed. Thus we can say how
old something is e.g. the sandstone is 300 million years old.

Although geologists can easily establish relative ages of rocks based on the principles of
Stratigraphy, knowing how much time a geologic Eon, Era, Period, or Epoch represents is a
more difficult problem without having knowledge of absolute ages of rocks. With the discovery
of radioactivity in 1896, radiometric dating techniques became possible, and gave us a means of
measuring absolute geologic time.

Radiometric Dating
Radiometric dating relies on the fact that there are different types of isotopes namely;
Radioactive Isotopes - isotopes (parent isotopes) that spontaneously decay at a constant rate to
another isotope and
Radiogenic Isotopes- isotopes that are formed by radioactive decay (daughter isotopes).

The rate at which radioactive isotopes decay is often stated as the half-life of the isotope (t1/2).
The half-life is the amount of time it takes for one half of the initial amount of the parent,
radioactive isotope, to decay to the daughter isotope. Thus, if we start out with 1 gram of the
parent isotope, after the passage of 1 half-life there will be 0.5 gram of the parent isotope left.
After the passage of two half-lives only 0.25 gram will remain and after 3 half lives only 0.125
will remain etc.

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 Principle of radioactive dating
 The percentage of radioactive atoms that decay during one half-life is always the same (50
percent)
 However, the actual number of atoms that decay continually decreases
 Comparing the ratio of parent to daughter yields the age of the sample

Some examples of isotope systems used to date geologic materials:

Parent Daughter t1/2 Useful Range Type of Material

238U 206Pb 4.5 b.y

>10 million
235U 207Pb 710 m.y years
232Th 208Pb 14 b.y Igneous Rocks and
Minerals
40Ar &
40K 1.3 b.y >10,000 years
40Ca
>10 million
87Rb 87Sr 47 b.y
years
100 - 70,000
14C 14N 5,730 y Organic Material
years

Potassium-Argon (K-Ar) dating.

 K is an element that goes into many minerals, like feldspars and biotite. Ar, which is a
noble gas, does not go into minerals when they first crystallize from magma because Ar
does not bond with any other atom.
 When a K-bearing mineral crystallizes from magma it will contain K, but will not contain
Ar. With passage of time, the 40K decays to 40Ar, but the 40Ar is now trapped in the
crystal structure where the 40K once was.
 Thus, by measuring the amount of 40K and 40Ar now present in the mineral, we can
determine how many half lives have passed since the igneous rock crystallized, and thus
know the absolute age of the rock.

Radiocarbon (14C) dating

How Carbon-14 is Made
Cosmic rays enter the earth's atmosphere in large numbers every day. For example, every
person is hit by about half a million cosmic rays every hour. It is not uncommon for a cosmic
ray to collide with an atom in the atmosphere, creating a secondary cosmic ray in the form of
an energetic neutron, and for these energetic neutrons to collide with nitrogen atoms. When
the neutron collides, a nitrogen-14 (seven protons, seven neutrons) atom turns into a carbon-
14 atom (six protons, eight neutrons) and a hydrogen atom (one proton, zero neutrons).
Carbon-14 is radioactive, with a half-life of about 5,700 years.
Carbon-14 in Living Things
The carbon-14 atoms that cosmic rays create combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide,
which plants absorb naturally and incorporate into plant fibers by photosynthesis. Animals

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 and people eat plants and take in carbon-14 as well. The ratio of normal carbon (carbon-12)
to carbon-14 in the air and in all living things at any given time is nearly constant. Maybe
one in a trillion carbon atoms are carbon-14. The carbon-14 atoms are always decaying, but
they are being replaced by new carbon-14 atoms at a constant rate. At this moment, your
body has a certain percentage of carbon-14 atoms in it, and all living plants and animals have
the same percentage.

Difficulties in dating
Not all rocks can be dated by radiometric methods.
 Grains comprising detrital sedimentary rocks are not the same as the rock in which they
formed.
 The age of particular mineral in a metamorphic rock may not necessarily represent the
time when the rock formed.