How is Earth’s history divided up into chunks of time?
The geologic history of the Earth is broken up into hierarchical chunks of time. From largest to smallest, this hierarchy includes eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages. All of these are displayed in the portion of the geologic time scale shown below.
What are Earth’s periods?
It is subdivided into six periods, the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian. Name of a major division of geologic time from c. 5 billion to 570 million years ago. It is now usually divided into the Archean and Proterozoic eons.
What are periods divided into?
PERIODS are subdivided into units of geologic time called ERAS.
What are the different division of Earth’s history?
The Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic Eras The Geologic Time Scale is the history of the Earth broken down into four spans of time marked by various events, such as the emergence of certain species, their evolution, and their extinction, that help distinguish one era from another.
What is the first time period of Earth’s history?
Precambrian Precambrian. The Precambrian includes approximately 90% of geologic time. It extends from 4.6 billion years ago to the beginning of the Cambrian Period (about 539 Ma). It includes three eons, the Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic.
How are eras and periods of the geological time scale named?
In the early 1800's a system for naming geologic time periods was devised using four periods of geologic time. They were named using Latin root words, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Quaternary. That worked for the time but we know so much more now than was known in the 1800's.
What is divided into eons eras periods and epochs?
Evidence of Earth's Past The time span of 4.5 billion years is divided into smaller segments or units called eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages (Table 7.2). For example, the entire age of the earth is divided into four eons: the Hadean Eon, the Archean Eon, the Proterozoic Eon, and the Phanerozoic Eon.
What is the period of time called that begins the geologic time scale?
The oldest subdivision of the time scale is the Precambrian (symbolized by PC, X, Y, or Z in the GRI GIS data). The Precambrian is split into three eons: Hadean (4600-4000 MYA), Archean (4000-2500 MYA), and Proterozoic (2500-541 MYA).