Geological Timescale

- Ancient rock and fossil data provide relative dates of paster events
- The rock record has contributed to the geological timescale
Amounts of time
- Eons=largest division (billions of years)
- Era= hundreds of millions of years
o Cenozoic (recent)
o Mesozoic (middle)
o Paleozoic (ancient)
- Periods= tens of millions of years; based on life forms that were abundant or became extinct
- Epochs= smallest division (millions of years)
o ONLY in the Cenozoic Era because rocks and fossils are more easily accessible
Why does Earths surface change
- Principle of Uniformitarianism
o The processes occurring on Earth today have been occurring since it formed, BUT the
rate and intensity have changed
o Ex: Erosion, earthquakes, sea levels
Why Are Rocks Striped
- Principle of Original Horizontality
o Sedimentary rocks are deposited in nearly horizontal layers
How do we know Relative Age
- Principle of Superposition
o Oldest Rocks are on the bottom
- Principle of Faunal Succession
o Oldest fossils are in the bottom layer, successive layers are younger
- Principle of Cross-Cutting Relationships
o An intrusion is younger than a rock it cuts across
What about gaps in the rock record
- Unconformities
o Layers get shifted up or down
o Layers get eroded away
Why does it all Matter
- Correlation- Matching rock regions in one area to another area
- Helps determine sequence of events in Earths history