The Geozoic Supereon
Abstract
Geological time units are the lingua franca of earth sciences: they are a terminological convenience, a vernacular of any geological conversation, and a prerequisite of geo-scientific writing found throughout in earth science dictionaries and textbooks. Time units include terms formalized by stratigraphic committees as well as informal constructs erected ad hoc to communicate more efficiently. With these time terms we partition Earth's history into utilitarian and intuitively understandable time segments that vary in length over seven orders of magnitude: from the 225-year-long Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000) to the ,4-billion-year-long Precambrian (e.g., Hicks, 1885; Ball, 1906; formalized by De Villiers, 1969).
Additional Information
© 2011 SEPM (Society for Sedimentary Geology). The concept of the Geozoic originated during meetings of a Working Group (Phanerozoic body size trends in time and space: macroevolution and macroecology) supported by the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), Durham, North Carolina (National Science Foundation EF-0423641). We thank a legion of colleagues for moral encouragement and etymological discussions.Attached Files
Published - Kowalewski2011p14791Palaios.pdf
Files
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:2400fea08c174d31950c0b2b97bfa264
|
331.4 kB | Preview Download |
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 24456
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20110719-090817393
- National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)
- EF-0423641
- NSF
- Created
-
2011-07-19Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field