Geological Timeline of Fossils

2.

1.

click on the plus signs to discover the ages of fossils

click on the lightbulbs for more information!

Oldest dinosaur fossils

Oldest human fossils

Oldeset rock

First fossils of land plants

4.6 bya

present

2 bya

3 bya

4 bya

1 bya

Oldest true mammal fossils

Oldeset known fossil

Oldest fish fossils

Oldest insect fossils

Next

Rhyniognatha

Lost in a drawer in a museum in London, tscientists recently found/rediscovered these set of jaws from an early insect they have determined to. be about 410 million years old.

Oldest Insect Fossil

Stromatolites: single-celled bacteria

the world’s oldest known examples of fossil stromatolites (3.45 billion years old), found near Marble Bar in the Pilbara (Australia) one of the most continuous and best-studied records of fossil stromatolites, with examples from a broad range of geological periods

• Fossil stromatolites, like this Proterozoic sample from the Amadeus Basin, are used to correlate rocks over vast distances in the State.

Stromatolites

The Jack Hills Zircon

The oldest rock has been dated to be about 4.4 billion years old! This rock has been found in multiple places all over the world.

Earth's Oldest Rocks

Fossilized spores from liverworts were discovered in Argentina and dating to be about 475 million years old! These are very. simple plants with no roots or stems.

First land plants: livworts

"This two-inch, 505-million-year-old creature belonged to the lineage that would later produce sharks, eels and other fish — along with birds, reptiles and mammals like us. This early vertebrate, known as Metaspriggina, was something of a mystery for years, known only from a pair of ambiguous fossils. But recently, scientists unearthed a trove of much more complete Metaspriggina fossils."

The Jack Hills Zircon

The oldest rock has been dated to be about 4.4 billion years old! This rock has been found in multiple places all over the world.

Earth's Oldest Rocks

Trilobite - 540 mya

"The first body fossils of trilobites appeared in the Early Cambrian Period, about 540 million years ago. The trilobite pictured above is an olenellid (probably in the genus Nevadella) from the Early Cambrian of southwestern Nevada, a very typical trilobite in the Lower Cambrian of North America. It seems likely that trilobites were preceded by soft-bodied ancestors: at several localities, sedimentary rocks with trace fossils of trilobite activity underlie the oldest rocks with trilobite body fossils.

Trilobite fossil

Homo spien fossils = 315,000 years old

A lower jaw and other tools were found in Morocco in 1961 and identified as the oldest human. This discovery provided evidence tht modern humans did not just originate just in North Africa, but all over the continent.

Oldest Dinosaur: Nyasasaurus parringtoni

In 2010 paleontologists from the University of Washington discovered and named this earliest known dinosaur found in Triassic rock in Tanzania. It has been dated to be 231 million years old!

Brasilodon quadrangularis

A recently discovered small mammal-like animal was found in Brazil dating at 225 million years old. Scientists originally thought the creature was a type of reptile, but the teeth structures are more mammalian like.

Oldest Mammal Fossil