The document outlines the geologic time scale which divides Earth's history into standardized units based on fossil evidence. The longest divisions are eons, which are subdivided into eras, then periods and epochs. Key events outlined include the earliest life forms in the Precambrian, the Cambrian explosion of diversity, dominance of dinosaurs in the Mesozoic, and ice ages in the Quaternary. Foundational scientists such as Steno, Hutton, and Smith established principles of stratigraphy, uniformitarianism, and using fossils to date rock layers.

1. GEOLOGIC TIME SCALE

2. GEOLOGIC TIME SCALE
Divides up the history of the earth based on
life-forms that have existed during specific times
since the creation of the planet.

3. GEOCHRONOLOGIC UNITS
(geo-rock/chronology-time)
The divisons of geologic time scale

4. DIVISIONS
EON
ERA
PERIOD
EPOCH

5. EON
• Longest division based
on the abundance of
certain fossils
ERA
• Next to longest
subdivision, marked by
major changes in the fossil
record. Based on types of
life existing at the time,
subdivision.

6. PERIOD
• Based on types of life
existing at the time,
subdivision of era.
EPOCH
• Shortest subdivision,
marked by differences in
life forms and can vary
from continent to
continent: subdivision of
period.

7. CAMBRIAN
• From the latin name for
Wales.
• Adam Sedgwick
DEVONIAN
• Named after a significant
rock outcrops first
discovered near
Devonshire.

8. JURASSIC
• Named for
representative strata
first seen in the Jura
mountains by German
geologist Humboldt
CRETACEOUS
• From the latin “creta-
chalk”

9. HADEAN
• The earliest time of the
earth.
• And refers to the time for
which we have no rock
record.
ARCHEAN
• Corresponds to the ages of
the oldest known rocks on
earth

10. PRECAMBRIAN EON
Hadean, Archean, and
Proterozoic Eon
PHANEROZOIC EON
The remainder of geologic
time, including the present
day.

11. Precambrian
(Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic Ages)
Earth takes 10 million years to cool: initial
atmosphere escapes into space (H&He) and
the core forms (Fe&Ni) Volcanic outgassing
of water and carbon dioxide occurred for
millions of years, helping to build
atmosphere and then oceans

12. Precambrian
(Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic Ages)
At 3 billion years ago, banded iron
formation rocks appear due to rising
oxygen levels in the atmosphere and
seaNo life possible as the Earth
initially forms 4.6 billion years ago.

13. Precambrian
(Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic Ages)
Simple, single-celled forms of life
appear 3.8 billion years ago.
They will become more complex and
successful over the next 3 billion
years: Prokaryotes then Eukaryotes
Cyanobacteria begins producing free
oxygen (photosynthesis)

14. PROTEROZOIC
No life possible as the earth initially forms
4.6B y/s ago
Simple, single-celled forms of life appear
3.8 B y/s: prokaryotes then eukaryotes
Cyanobacteria begins producing free
oxygen (photosynthesis)
Land masses gather to make up a
continent called “Rodinia”

15. CAMBRIAN
Explosion of life
All existing phyla come into being at
this time
Life forms in warm seas as oxygen
levels rise enough to support life
Dominant animals: Marine
invertebrates (trilobits and
brachiopods)
Supercontinent Gondwana

16. ORDOVICIAN
The first animals with bones appear,
though dominant animals are still
trilobites, brachiopods and corals
A very cold time in the Earth’s
history: there was a great extinction
due to ice caps in present-day Africa
Gondwana, Baltica, Siberia,
Laurentia

17. SILURIAN
First land plants appear and land
animals follow
Coral reefs expand and land
plants begin to colonize barren
land.
First millipede fossils and sea
scorpions (Euryptides)
•Extensive erosion

18. DEVONIAN (AGE OF THE FISH)
Pre-Pangea forms
Dominant animals: Fish
Ocean still freshwater and fish
migrate from southern hemisphere to
North America
Hardwoods began to grow
Amphibians, evergreens, and ferns
appear
•Acadian Orogeny – SC metamorphism

19. MISSISSIPPIAN
First seed plants appear
Much of North America
is covered by shallow seas
and sea life flourishes
Carboniferous

20. PENNSYLVANIAN
Modern North America begins to
form
•Ice covers the southern hemisphere
and coal swamps (future coal deposits
) formed along the equator
Lizards and winged insects first
appear
Carboniferous

21. PERMIAN
Last period of the paleozoic
Pangea forms
Reptiles spread across continents
The Appalachians rise
90% of earth’s species become extinct due
tovolcanism in siberia. This marks the end
of trilobites, ammonoids, blastoids, and
most fish

22. TRIASSIC
 First dinosaurs, mammals-small rodents , crinoids,
and modern echinoids appear
Life and fauna rediversify
Rocky mountains form and Sierra
Nevada form
-Pangea begins to break apart
-Rocky Mountains and Sierra
Nevada form

23. JURASSIC
Pangea stil breaking apart
Dinosaurs flourish “golden age of dinosaurs”
First birds appear
North America continues to rotate away from
Africa

24. CREATACEOUS
T-Rex develops but number of dinosaur species
decline
First snakes and primates appear
Angiosperms appear , Decidous trees and grasses
common
First flowering plants
Mess extinction, marks the end of the Mesozoic
Era, with the demise of dinosaurs and 25% of all
marine life

25. TERTIARY
First horses appear and tropical plants dominate

26. PALEOCENE
Earthquakes common;
Georgia
Embayment, Cape Fear
Arch
forms in Southeast
First horses appear (size
of a cat)
Tropical plants
dominate
EOCENE
Sea levels rise; deposits of
marinesediments –
limestone in S.C.;and
bridges form
Grass spreads widely
Diverse array of animals
develop,ncluding whales,
rhinos, and elephants

27. OLIGOCENE
• Appalachians uplift;
erosion
• increases
• Cats, dogs, and apes
appear
MIOCENE
• Sandhills form in S.C.
• Horses, mastadons,
mammoths, tigers, and
camels live in
SouthCarolina

28. PLIOCENE
Volcanic activity in
North
America and Africa
Grand Canyon forms
Hominids develop

29. HOLOCENE
• Beaches and barrier
islands form
• Mastadons become
extinct
• Human culture flourishes
• Accelerating extinction of
many species
• 1.8 Pleistocene Ice sheets
form
• Modern humans develop
• Asians arrive and settle
the
• Americas
PLEISTOCENE
• Ice sheets form
• Modern humans develop
• Asians arrive and settle
the
• Americas
This two epoch are under
the quaternary period.

30. NICHOLAS STENO
A Danish physician, described how the
position of a rock layer could be used to
show the relative age of the layer.
 He devised the three main principles
that underlie the interpretation of
geologic time

31. THE PRINCIPLE OF HORIZONTALITY
All rock layer were orginally
deposited horizontally

32. THE PRINCIPLE OF SUPERPOSITION
The layer on the bottom was
deposited first and so is the
oldest

33. THE PRINCIPLE OF ORIGINAL
LATERAL CONTINUITY
Originally deposited layers of
rock extend laterally in all
directions until either thinning
out or being cut off by a
different rock layer.

34. STRATIGRAPHY
The study of the layered
rock.

35. ABRAHAM GOTTLOB WERNER
“All rocks come from the ocean
environment” (NEPTUNISTS)

36. NEPTUNISTS
•“All rocks
comefrom the
ocean
environment
•Abraham gottlob
werner
PLUTONISTS
•Rocks of the
earh came
from vocanic
environment

37. JAMES HUTTON
Thought the surface of the earth was an ever-
changing environment
The present is the key to the past

38. WILLIAM SMITH
A surveyor , he was the first to understand
that certain rock units could be identified by
the particular assemblagesof fossils they
contained.
The principle of biological succession

39. UNCONFORMITIES
Are gaps in the geologic record that may
indicated episodes of crustal deformation,
erosion, and sea level variations.
They are feature of stratified rocks
They are surface between two rock bodies that
constitute a substantial break (hiatus) in the
geologic record

40. UNCONFORMITIES
“Time is missing”
Represent times when deposition
stopped, an interval of erosion removed
some of the previously deposited rock,
and finally deposition was resumed.

41. ANGULAR UNCONFORMITIES
Horiontal bed are uplifted or eroded
followed by new deposition of horizontal
beds.
An older package of sediments has been
tilted, truncated by erosion, and then a
younger package of sediments was
deposited on this eroion surface

42. ANGULAR UNCONFORMITIES
Subsidence and sediment deposition
occurs
Rocks are uplifted and tilted
(deformation)
Erosion removes the uplifted mountain
range
Subsidence ocurs, the sea covers the
land surface, and new sediment
depoition occurs on top of the prevois
land surface

43. DISCONFORMITY
Episodes of erosion or non-deposition
between layers are also an erosion
surface between two packages of
sediment, but the lower package of
sediments was not tilted prior to
deposition of the upper sediment
package.

44. DISCONFORMITY
Are parrale, and is more difficult
to recognize
Subsidence and sediment deposition
Uplift and erosion
Renewed subsidence and deposition

45. NONCONFORMITY
Sediments is deposited on top of eroded
volcanic or metamorphic rock.
Are unconformities that separate igneous
or metamorphic rocks from overlying
sedimentary rock
Usually indicate that a long period of
erosion occurred prior to depositionof the
sediments

46. CHARLES LYELL
Cross-cutting relationships
A principle of geology that’s tates that
the geologic feature which cuts another
is he younger of the two feartures’
It is a relative dating technique in
geology

47. FOSSILS
The preserved remains of
organisms that had died
Paleontologist
 A person who studies fossils

48. MOLD FOSSILS
When sediments
bury an organism
and the sediments
hardens into rock
The organism decays
slowly inside the
rock, leaving a cavity
in the shape of the
organism
CAST FOSSILS
• The cavity or mold
mentioned above can
filled in with mud.
When the mud
hardens, it takes on
the shapeof the
organism

49. PETRIFIED/ PERMINERALIZED
FOSSILS
Minerals like calcium
can soak into the
buried remains of an
organism. The
mineral replaces the
remaining bone and
changes it into rock
CARBONIZED FOSSILS
• When organism parts
are presssed between
layers of mud or clay
that hardens over
time, squeezing the
decaying organism
away and leaving
carbon imprints in the
rock, since all living
things contain carbon.

50. TRACE FOSSILS
When the mud or
sand hardens into
rock where a
footprint, trail, or
burrow was left
behind
CARBONIZED FOSSILS
• When organism parts
are presssed between
layers of mud or clay
that hardens over
time, squeezing the
decaying organism
away and leaving
carbon imprints in the
rock, since all living
things contain carbon.

51. SYSTEMATICS
Systema-together
Partly overlap with taxonomy and
originally used to describe the
system of classification prescribed
by early biologist.

52. CARL LINNAEUS
Applied the word systematics in the
system of classification in his famous
book “Systema Natura, 1735”

53. BLACKWELDER and BOYDEN
Systematics is the entire field dealing
with the kinds of animals, their
distinction, classification and evolution

54. GEORGER GAYLORD SIMPSON
Systematics is the scientific study of
the kinds and diversity of organism of
any and all relationships among them.

55. Systematics
is the scientific study of the kinds and
diversity of organism of any and all
relationships among them.
is the entire field dealing with the
kinds of animals, their distinction,
classification and evolution

56. TAXONOMY
Is the theoretical study of
classification, including its bases,
principles, procedures, and rules
(Simpson, 1961)

57. ARISTOTLE AND CARL LINNAEUS
The method for naming plants and
animals are credited to these persons.

58. CARL LINNAEUS
Develop Modern taxonomy
The System of Nature (Systema
Naturae)

59. THE SYSTEM OF NATURE
(SYSTEMA NATURAE)
Is renowned for its overarching
classification system that structured all
plants and animals from kingdoms to
species level

60. CARL LINNAEUS
He was the first to combine a
hierarchical system of classification
from kingdom to species with the
process of binomial nomenclature in
his System of Nature, utilizing its
consistency to identify every species of
plants and animals known to him.

61. ARISTOTLE
Father of Science
Original Father of Taxonomy
Was the first to introduce the two
most important notions in modern
taxonomy: TYPE CATEGORIZATION
AND BINOMIAL DEFINITION

62. ARISTOTLE
Was the first one to attempt to
categorize all types of animals
Held the belief that the essence of a
species was fixed and unchanging.
Binomial definition was another of his
inventions.

63. BINOMIAL
Refers to a system in which each type
of organism is characterized by the two
names of its “GENUS and DIFFERENCE”
Was not applied by Aristotle in a
systematic way

64. BINOMIAL
Refers to a system in which each type
of organism is characterized by the two
names of its “GENUS and DIFFERENCE”

65. AIMS OF SYSTEMATICS
• To provide a convenient
method of
identification and
communication.
• To provide an inventory
of the world’s flora and
fauna.

66. AIMS OF SYSTEMATICS
• To detect evolution at
work; to reconstruct
the evolutionary history
of the plant and animal
kingdom, determining
the sequence of
evolutionary change
and character
modification.
• To provide a system of
classification which
depicts the evolution
within the group.

67. AIMS OF SYSTEMATICS
• To provide an
integration of all
available information.
• To provide an
information reference
,supplying the
methodology for
information storage,
retrieval, exchange and
utilization.

68. AIMS OF SYSTEMATICS
• To provide new
concepts, reinterpret
the old, and develop
new procedures for
correct determination
of taxonomic affinities,
in terms of phylogeny
and phenetics.
• To provide integrated
databases including all
species of plants across
the globe

69. Theories of Taxonomy; Classification
and Phylogeny of Animals
• A. Traditional
evolutionary taxonomy
• Phylogenetic
systematics (cladistics)

70. Relationship between a taxonomic
groups
Three forms
-Monophyly
-Paraphyly
-Polyphyly

71. MONOPHYLETIC
Includes the most recent common
ancestor of the group and all
descendant of that ancestor

72. PARAPHYLETIC
Includes the most recent common
ancestor of all members of a group but
not all of the descendants of that
ancestor

73. POLYPHYLETIC
Does not include the most recent
common ancestor of all emmbers of a
group this condition requires that the
group has had at least two separate
evolutionary origins, usually requiring
independent evolutionary acquisition
of similar features.

74. A. Traditional evolutionary taxonomy incorporates two
different evolutionary principles for recognizing and ranking
higher taxa
• Common ancestor • Amount of adaptive
evolutionary change

75. GEORGE GAYLOD SIMPSON
Mammalian paleontologist, was highly
influential in developing and
formalizing the procedures of
evolutionary taxonomy.

76. GEORGE GAYLOD SIMPSON
According to him, a particular branch
on the evolutionary tree is given the
status of higher taxon if it represents a
distinct adaptive zone

77. Adaptive Zone
A characteristic reaction and mutual
relationship between environment and
organism, a way of life and not a place
where life is led.
By entering a new adaptive zone through
a fundamental change in organismal
structure and behavior, an evolving
population can use environmental
resources in a completely new species.

78. GRADE
• A taxon that comprises a
distinct adaptive zone.
• Ex. penguins

79. Phylogenetic systematics (cladistics)
• A second an stronger
challenge to
evolutionary taxonomy
• This approach
emphasizex the criteria
of common descent
and, as the second
name implies, it is
based on the
cladogram of the group
being classified.

80. Willi Hennig
• Phylogenetic systematics (cladistics)Hennigian
Systematics
• All taxa recognized by this must be
monophyletic

81. • Zoologist often construct paraphyletic group
because they are interested in a terminal,
monophyletic group, such as humans, and
they want to ask questions about its ancestry.
• It is often convenient to lump together
organisms whose features are considered
approximately equally distant from the group
of interest and to ignore their own unique
features
• It is significant in this regard that humans have
never been placed in a paraphyletic group,
whereas most organisms have been.

82. SISTER GROUP
•Different monophyletic taxa that share
common ancestry with each other
more recently than either one does
with other taxa.

83. Contribution to other fields of
biology
• Systematics is the key to
understand the
fascinating biodiversity
around us. Benefits the
human beings by
providing the
fundamental knowledge
about the sustainable
resource management,
environmental
protection, and
landscape preservation to
food security.
• The contribution of
systematic to biology can
be studied into two
heads:
• - theoretical biology
• - applied biology

84. THEORETICAL BIOLOGY
APPLIED BIOLOGY
1. It is responsible in making conceptual contribution
like population thingking
2. It is responsible in solving the problems of
multiplication of species. It illustrates the structure
of species and evolutionary processes.
3. Mimicry and other evolutionary areas also have
been a clearly understood through taxonomy.
4. It has also played important role in the
developement of behavioral science.
5. Taxonomy is the key to study of ecology, as no
ecological survey can be undertaken unless all the
species of ecological importance are identified.

85. APPLIED BIOLOGY
1. Agriculture and forestry
2. Biological control
3. Public health
4. Quarantine
5. Wildlife management
6. Mineral prospecting
7. National defense
8. Environmental problem
9. Soil fertility
10. In commerce

86. Systematics and its significance
• Systematics is the study
of the units of
biodiversity.
• Concerned with the
diversification of
lineages through time.
• Ecology is concerned
with the interactions of
individuals (and
therefore species) in a
particular time

87. Roles and products of systematics
in modern biology
1. Systematics identify
and document Earth’s
biodiversity, and organize
this information in a
form that can be utilized
by others.
2. Systematic patterns
are hypotheses of the
history of life and form
the basis for modern
classifications.

88. Roles and products of systematics
in modern biology
3. 4. Systematics provides a
basis for biodiversity
conservation priorities.

89. Roles and products of systematics
in modern biology
5. Systematics provides
evidence for patterns of
geologic change.
6. Systematics and
systematic collections
provide identification
services and
documentation of
identity.