Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Fossils and the geological timescale The following list gives the geologic timescale and its associated primary fossils. Precambrian (3.8 billion to 570 million years ago) Bacteria and blue-green algae Cambrian (570 to 500 million years ago) First invertebrates Ordovician (500 to 440 million years ago) Silurian (440 to 410 million years ago) First land plants First land invertebrates Devonian (410 to 365 million years ago) First ferns and seed plants First insects First amphibians Carboniferous (365 to 290 million years ago) First flying insects First reptiles Permian (290 to 245 million years ago) Triassic (245 to 210 million years ago) Extinction of trilobites First dinosaurs First mammals Jurassic (210 to 140 million years ago) First birds Cretaceous (140 to 65 million years ago) First flowering plants First primates Extinction of dinosaurs Extinction of ammonites Paleocene (65 to 55 million years ago) Diversification and spreading of mammals Eocene (55 to 38 million years ago) Oligocene (38 to 25 million years ago) First grass Miocene (25 to 5 million years ago) Pliocene (5 to 2 million years ago) First hominids This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.