pangea supercontinent

Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
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Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline
Pangea supercontinent from space, as it may have looked 300 million years ago.
The Earth is a little over 4.5 billion years old, its oldest materials being 4.3 billion-year-old zircon crystals. Its earliest times were geologically violent, and it suffered constant bombardment from meteorites. When this ended, the Earth cooled and its surface solidified to a crust - the first solid rocks. There were no continents as yet, just a global ocean peppered with small islands. Erosion, sedimentation and volcanic activity - possibly assisted by more meteor impacts - eventually created small proto-continents which grew until they reached roughly their current size 2.5 billion years ago. The continents have since repeatedly collided and been torn apart, so maps of Earth in the distant past are quite different to today's.
The history of life on Earth began about 3.8 billion years ago, initially with single-celled prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria. Multicellular life evolved over a billion years later and it's only in the last 570 million years that the kind of life forms we are familiar with began to evolve, starting with arthropods, followed by fish 530 million years ago (Ma), land plants 475Ma and forests 385Ma. Mammals didn't evolve until 200Ma and our own species, Homo sapiens, only 200,000 years ago. So humans have been around for a mere 0.004% of the Earth's history.
View the Tree of Life
Jump to:Geological timeline | Geological time periods | Big Five mass extinction events |
Mass extinction theories | Ancient Earth habitats
Geological timeline
During its dramatic 4.5 billion year history, Earth has gone through a series of major geological and biological changes. The timescale below highlights a number of notable prehistoric events and the geological periods in which they occurred. As things didn't get interesting from a biological perspective until around 570 million years ago, we've included a couple of zoomed in timelines to show the detail of more recent evolutionary history. Show text only timeline