Friday, February 5, 2021

Phanerozoic Eon

 The current geologic eon of Earth is the Phanerozoic Eon. It started 541 million years ago and continues today. It is the only eon during which abundant animal and plant life has existed. It began at about the same time that animals first developed hard shells, as preserved in the fossil record.

During the early stages of the Phanerozoic Eon, a number of animal types came into existence and evolved into diverse forms, and complex plants emerged and developed. In addition, fish, insects and tetrapods (which includes all living and extinct species of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) also emerged and evolved. Plant life appeared on land early in the eon.

Pangaea was the most recent supercontinent during the early days of this eon, but tectonic forces broke it up into the current continental landmasses, and then proceeded to move them around into their current configuration.

The Phanerozoic Eon consists of 3 eras, which are broken up into 12 periods. Now that plants and animals have shown up in earnest, I expect there will be plenty of information about what was going on during each segment.

In fact, the article I found for this eon actually had paragraphs (or more) for each period, but I skipped over them because I didn't want to get ahead of myself. I hope I remember to check back to this article if I have trouble finding information on the eras and periods that comprise this eon.

This is a very short blog, not because I couldn't find much information, but because there was so much information, it needs to be broken into smaller time segments to get that information into manageable bites. But do stay tuned, because we are finally approaching Dinosaur Land!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phanerozoic#:~:text=The%20Phanerozoic%20Eon%20is%20the,preserved%20in%20the%20fossil%20record.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_tetrapods

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