Before and after the recently passed International Geological Diversity Day, some geological science popularization activities have attracted many curious eyes. Understanding the Earth is not only about understanding our living environment, but also about understanding our past and future. The oldest zircon on Earth has been discovered in western Australia, with an isotopic age of 4.374 billion years, but it is still about 200 million years behind the origin of the Earth. Fortunately, through in-depth research on meteorites, scientists have determined that the oldest meteorites formed 4.57 billion years ago. The practice of using this as a reference to determine the age of the Earth has been widely accepted by the scientific community, which is the origin of our well-known Earth's approximately 4.6 billion year evolutionary history. In the long evolutionary history of the Earth, the "growth traces" solidified in rocks have become scattered in the ever-changing world. How to explore the source and vein of Earth's evolution in these rock records? This requires us to use a timeline to link these fragmented historical evidence and create a time frame that can be used to study the history of the Earth, providing a basis for humans to grasp the present and predict the future changes of the Earth. In different geological historical periods, different types of organisms that construct the Earth's biosphere have formed lineage evolution sequences of various types of fossils in rock records. With the joint efforts of geologists and paleontologists around the world, the time frame for Earth's evolutionary history has been established, and the "International Chronostratigraphic Table" has emerged, and this time frame is still being continuously improved. In this time frame, there is a key time node, which is the intersection of the Ediacaran and Cambrian periods approximately 540 million years ago, and the geological period before this is known as the Paleozoic. During the cryptozoic era, organisms were mainly low-level bacteria and algae, which were difficult to preserve as fossils. Moreover, the deterioration of rocks led to the extinction of biological traces. Although organisms appeared over 3 billion years ago, their evolution has been stagnant at a relatively low level for a long time, making it difficult to determine accurate geological ages through the stages of biological evolution. Correspondingly to the Phanerozoic era, the Phanerozoic era marks the entry of Earth's history into the Phanerozoic era, as the Earth's biosphere shifted from dominated by lower plants to dominated by invertebrates. Scientists have divided the Paleozoic into the Mesozoic, Archean, and Proterozoic eras. The division of the Phanerozoic can be further divided into the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic based on different stages of biological evolution and isotopic ages. The cryptozoic era is difficult to establish a time frame based on biological evolution, and geologists have established standard ages through isotope geochronology to depict the sequence of major geological events. Phanerozoic life flourished, fossil records were complete, and the time frame was clear. Geologists obtained a large amount of age data through radioactive isotopes. The combination of the two makes the age limit for biological evolution, major geological events, etc. more precise. With the continuous improvement of the international chronostratigraphic table, geologists from various countries around the world can study the structure, ancient geography, ancient environment, and changes in ancient climate of the Earth within a unified time frame, providing reference for protecting the Earth, protecting the ecological environment, and serving the construction of human ecological civilization. (New News Agency)
Edit：Hu Sen Ming Responsible editor：Li Xi
Source：people.com.cn
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