Earth History

Eon	Era	Period	Epoch	Years Ago	Age of	Significant Events
Phanerozoic	Cenozoic	Quaternary	Holocene	0-11,000	Mammals	Human Civilization
			Pleistocene	11,000-2 million		Ice Age
		Tertiary		2-66 million		Extinction of Dinosaurs
	Mesozoic	Cretaceous		66-144 million	Reptiles	Flowering Plants
		Jurassic		144-208 million		Birds and Mammals
		Triassic		208-245 million		Dinosaurs
	Paleozoic	Permian		245-286 million	Amphibians	Extinction of Trilobites
		Carboniferous		286-320 million		First Reptiles and Large Primitive Trees
		Devonian		260-408 million	Fishes	First Amphibians
		Silurian		408-438 million		First Land Plant Fossils
		Ordovician		438-505 million	Invertebrates	First Fish
		Cambrian		505-570 million		First Shells-Trilobites Dominate
Proterozoic	Also known as the Precambrian			570 million- 2.5 billion		First Multi-celled Organisms
Archean				2.5- 3.8 billion		First One-celled Organisms
Hadean				3.8-4.6 billion		Approximate age of oldest known rocks

250 million years ago all of the land masses of the Earth were joined together in one SUPER-CONTINENT called Pangaea.

Somewhere around 180 million years ago Pangaea split ino two smaller supercontinents. The Northern landmass contained North America Asia and Europe and was called Laurasia. The Southern landmass, Gondwanaland, consisted of Africa, South America, Antarctica, Arabia and India.

150 million years ago a split in the Earth’s crust formed between modern-day Africa and South America. The split in the crust extruded massive amounts of lava. It was called the Triple Junction. Hundreds of square miles of lava in some places thousands of feet deep covered parts of Africa and South America. Today this lava can be found as basalt at locations in Argentina and Namibia.

Plate Tectonics	UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Continental Drift	UNDER CONSTRUCTION
The Cryosphere	UNDER CONSTRUCTION
The Hydrosphere	UNDER CONSTRUCTION