The Timeline of Earth 🌍

Period: Precambrian earliest period

1st organisms - Single celled (oxygen present)

Later - Multi-celled organisms

Period: Cambrian (540mya)

- Lots of different organisms

- Earliest animals with backbone

- Lots of carbon dioxide

Period: Ordovician (490mya)

- Lots of animals without skeletons

- Early shells fish (trilobites, nautilus, sea stars, fish) 

- 1st green plants (fungi, moss) 

- End of Ice Age

Period: Silurian (443mya)

- 1st Advanced plants

- Jawed fish with amour

- More shellfish 

Period: Devonian 

- 1st Ferns

- 1st fir trees with seeds

- 1st wingless insects

- 1st amphibians

- Some animals from earlier periods die out

- Moist climate cool

Period: Carboniferous (354mya)

- Swampy land 

- 1st "Coal forest" 

- Coal for over millions of years

- Early sharks and large trees

- 1st reptiles+Vertebrates

- Trilobites disappearance

- Glaciers Form 

- Winged insects

Period: Permian (290mya)

- Land masses have formed

- Glaciers disappear meaning the weather is warmer

- Lots of Reptiles

- 1st cone bearing trees 

- Beetles and Flies appear

- Lots of life in the Oceans
- 251mya 95% life ended - Meaning they all died out

Period: Triassic (248mya)

- Dinosaurs appear
- First mammals and crocodile appear
- Modern corals and fish start to appear

Period: Jurassic (206mya)

- Lots of different dinosaurs 
- Ferns and cone bearing plants 
- Mammals common but small
- First birds and lizards 
-Land mass, Pangaea breaks up into Gondwanaland and Laurasia 
- High Carbon Dioxide levels

Period: Cretaceous (144mya)

- Lots of dinosaurs including Tyrannaosaurs

- New types of insects

- Flowering plants appear and become plentiful

- Modern crocodiles and sharks

- Early birds appear

- Gondwanaland (land mass) breaks up

- Rocky mountains appear

- Carbon dioxide similar to today

- Still no humans, monkeys, or primates

Period: Paleogene (65mya) 

- Modern plants

- Lots of different mammals

- Dinosaurs are not extinct (unclear reason as to why)

- Primitive whales

- First grasses

- Rapid changes in mammals as they become more complex

- Climates cools

- Ice age begins and ends during this period

- The Sahara Desert was covered in grass

Period: Neogene (23mya)

- Modern climate

- Modern mammals and birds

- Horses evolve from dog like animals

- Lots of grasses

- First Apes appear

- Southern Alps of New Zealand appear (yay!)

Period: Quaternary (1.8mya - present)

- Anatomically correct, modern humans

- Human stone age culture

- Ice age comes and goes

- Sahara forms from grassland

- Humans begin agriculture and farming

- Stone age > Bronze age (3300BC) > Iron age (1120BC)

- Industrial revolution leads to rises in carbon dioxide levels

- Today we are in the technology revolution.