The geological timescale is one of the great achievements of science. It’s the cumulation of work that started over two centuries ago in Europe and has since been continued by generations of geoscientists around the globe. The timescale was initially constructed by correlation of rock strata and their fossils; it wasn’t until the discovery of radiometric dating in the middle 20th Century that numerical ages could be added to the timescale. It’s still a work in progress; the timescale shown here is based on version 2022/2, published by the International Commission on Stratigraphy.
