Students in Earth Sceince 337 are required to commit the geologic time scale (below) to memory. Please note that each of these terms are proper nouns (capitalized). Each of the lecture examinations will include this as one of the questions asked. Students may respond with EITHER Mississippian\Pennsylvanian (used in North America) OR Carboniferous (used everywhere else).
Terms in parenthesis need not be committed to memory.
Some things to look for (commonly missed):
it is Pleistocene ("ei" does not conform to a common spelling rule); and
it is Ordovician (not Ordivician which is what the word often sounds like).
YOUNGEST
Eon
Era
Period
Epoch
Phanerozoic
Cenozoic
Quaternary
Holocene
Pleistocene
Tertiary
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene
Mesozoic
Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Carboniferous
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
(Proterozoic)
Precambrian
(Archean)
(Hadean)
OLDEST
Last Updated on 10/7/02
By David B. Johnson
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