Geologists divide Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history into a time scale that isn’t marked by a calendar, but by significant changes to the planet that can be seen in the geologic record.

When the geologic time periods were being named, mainly in Great Britain, the time during which coal was being deposited was christened the Carboniferous Period.

Geologists break down our planet’s history into eons, eras, periods, epochs and ages — with an eon being the largest chunk of time and an age the shortest. For example, we currently live in ...

Geologists have added a new period to their official calendar of Earth's history - the first in 120 years. The Ediacaran Period covers some 50 million years of ancient time on our planet from 600 ...

The Anthropocene is the name of a proposed new geological time period (probably an epoch) that may soon enter the official Geologic Time Scale. The Anthropocene is defined by the human influence ...

All the latest science news on geological time period from Phys.org. Find the latest news, advancements, and breakthroughs.

All of these approaches face a challenge, however: combining human-caused changes with natural, global variations that normally demarcate different geologic time periods. For instance, our current ...

Geologists have added a new period to their official calendar of Earth's history - the first in 120 years. The Ediacaran Period covers some 50 million years of ancient time on our planet from 600 ...