Geologic Timescale

Geologic Timescale
Era	Period	Epoch	Approximate duration (millions of years)	Approximate number of years ago (millions of years)
Cenozoic 7	Quaternary 2	Holocene	10,000 years ago to the present
Pleistocene	2	.01
Tertiary 5	Pliocene	11	2
Miocene	12	13
Oligocene	11	25
Eocene	22	36
Paleocene	71	58
Mesozoic 3	Cretaceous		71	65
Jurassic		54	136
Triassic		35	190
Paleozoic 6	Permian		55	225
Carboniferous		65	280
Devonian		60	345
Silurian		20	405
Ordovician		75	425
Cambrian		100	500
Precambrian¹			>4,000	600

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¹ Not an era but the time preceding the Cambrian.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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More on Geologic Timescale table from Fact Monster:

Permian period - Permian period Permian period [from Perm, Russia], sixth and last period of the Paleozoic era (see ...
epoch - epoch epoch, unit of geologic time that is a subdivision of a period. The Pleistocene and Holocene ...
Carboniferous period - Carboniferous period Carboniferous period , fifth period of the Paleozoic era of geologic time (see ...
Cretaceous period - Cretaceous period Cretaceous period , third and last period of the Mesozoic era of geologic time ...
Pleistocene epoch - Pleistocene epoch Pleistocene epoch , 6th epoch of the Cenozoic era of geologic time (see Geologic ...

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