GEOLOGIC TIME SCALE o Precambrian

- A system of chronological measurement FOSSIL

that relates stratigraphy to time.
- The remnant of any ancient animal or plant
- It is used by geologist to describe the timing
has been preserved in rock
and relationships between events that have
- It is often the remains of the shell or bones
occurred throughout Earth’s history.
in which minerals have been crystallized.
- Geologist divided Earth’s history into a
- The age of the fossil is equal to the age of
series of time intervals using significant
the rock on which it is found.
events in the history. They have divided 4.6
Gya history into different spans of time to EXEMPTION: Not all fossils can be used
conveniently indicate events. as index fossils to represent time
interval.
 Age (million years)
 Epoch (ten million years) PROPERTIES OF INDEX FOSSILS
o Holocene  It must have hard parts which favor
o Pleistocene Quarternary fossilization.
o Pliocene  It must have lived over a short period of time,
o Miocene before it evolved into a different creature.
o Oligocene Tertiary  It must have a good distribution and lived all
o Eocene over the planet.
o Paleocene
NOTE: If two rocks anywhere on the
 Period (one hundred million years)
planet contain the same index fossil it
o Quartenary
can be concluded that those rocks are
o Tertiary Cenozoic
of the same age.
o Cretaceous
o Jurassic Mesozoic EXAMPLES:
o Triassic
 Ammonites were common during the Mesozoic
o Permian
Era.
o Pennsylvanian
 Brachiopods (mollusk – like marine animals)
o Mississippian first appeared during the Cambrian and some of
o Devonian Paleozoic which still survive.
o Silurian  Graptolites – wide spread colonial
o Ordovician hemichordates lived from Cambrian period to
o Cambrian the early to mid - carboniferous.
o Bacteria and blue Proterozoic  Trilobites were common during the Paleozoic
green algae (540 Mya – 245 mya) and evolved on the same
o Oldest fossils - Archean era. They went extinct during the late Permian
o (beginning of earth) - Hadean (248 Mya).
 Era (several million years)
o Cenozoic
PRECAMBRIAN EON
o Mesozoic Phanerozoic
o Paleozoic - 88% of Earth’s history, starting with the
o Proterozoic formation of Earth about 4.54 Gya – 570
o Archean Precambrian Mya.
o Hadean - In this era, earth was thought to be hot,
 Eon (half a billion years) steaming and hostile landscape, with the
o Phanerozoic primitive crust of the newly formed planet
is only beginning to cool.
 - Subdivided into 3 eons : Hadean, Archaean
and Protezoic
HADEAN
- Little is known in hadean because there are
few rocks of age, and those that exist are
intensely deformed and metamorphosed.
The condition in this time was like hell.
ARCHEAN
- Plate tectonics allowed crustal building and
CENOZOIC ERA
the formation of volcanic belts and
sedimentary basins.
- Marine rocks during this eon contain fossil
remains microscopic algae and bacteria.
PROTEROZOIC
- Rifting of the continental crust and its
subsequent filling with sedimentary and
volcanic rocks occurred in this eon.
- Extensive iron deposits are formed.
PHANEROZOIC EON
- “visible life”
- Subdivided into 3 eras: Paleozoic, Mesozoic
and Cenozoic
PALEOZOIC ERA
- Separated into 6 periods : Cambrian,
Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian,
Carboniferous and Permian
- Paleozoic marked the beginning of life as by
the sudden abundance of complex
organism with hard parts in the fossil
record. This is known as the Cambrian
Explosion
- Devonian – Age of the fishes
o Air breathing amphibians began to
move from ocean to land. Large
tropical swamps dominated much
of the landscape.
o Large area of swamps flourished
RADIOMETRIC DATING
during the carboniferous, which
become the coal deposits that we
have today.
MESOZOIC ERA
- Occurred from 245 Mya – 66 Mya
- Known to be era of dinosaurs as the fossil
record in this era is dominated by
dinosaurs.
o Carnivore, Herbivore, winged
reptiles and marine reptiles.
- During this era, new trees such as conifers
appeared and mammals were just starting
to emerge. The end of this era is marked by
a massive extinction which wiped out the
dinosaurs.
- Known to be the age of recent life or age of
mammals.
- Contains 66 million years of Earth’s history.
It is subdivided into 2 periods : Quarternary
and Tertiary. And these periods are divided
into several epochs:
TERTIARY QUARTERNARY
Paleocene, Eocene, Pleistocene and
Oligocene, Holocene
Miocene, Pliocene
- This era has the most complete geologic
record of all the era because it is the
youngest and the rocks are more accessible
and are not yet deformed of
metamorphism.
- Pre-historic human also began to emerge
during this era and a mass extinction event
occurred toward the Pleistocene epoch,
which correspond to the end of the last ice
age.
- An extinction event caused the
disappearance of mammoths, mastodons,
saber-tooth tigers and ground sloths among
other organisms that were adapted to the
climate of the glacial period.
- Based on the subdivision of geologic time
scale, we are now living in the Holocene
Epoch, of the Quarternary period, of the
Cenozoic era of the Phanerozoic eon.
- Potassium – argon
o This method is used mainly to date
rocks older than 100,000 years.
- Rubidium – strontium
o This method is used to date rocks
older than 10 million years.
EATH PROCESS

- EXOGENIC PROCESSES
o Processes are interconnected with
the atmosphere hydrosphere and
biosphere and include the
processes of weathering, erosion,
transportation and deposition.

WEATHERING

- The physical breakdown of rock and its

eventual transportation into sediments.
 MECHANICAL WEATHERING
- The physical breakdown of a rock into
unconnected grains or chunks without
changing its composition.
 CHEMICAL WEATHERING
- Occurs when there are chemical changes in
at least some of the composition of the
rock.

- ENDOGENIC PROCESSES
o Volcanism
o Earthquake