Paleozoic era
Ancient life epoch
The Paleozoic era is a major division of geologic time spanning roughly 290 million years, from about 540 to 250 million years ago.
It saw the emergence of complex marine life, the colonization of land by plants and animals, and ended with Earth's largest mass extinction.
The name means "ancient life" in Greek.
Trilobites dominated Paleozoic seas.
- fossilPreserved ancient organism
- trilobiteExtinct segmented marine arthropod
- Cambrian explosionSudden appearance of complex life
- stromatolitesLayered sedimentary bacterial structures
- CambrianEarliest Paleozoic period
paleontology · brachiopods · Pangaea · extinct · Permian · sea scorpion · jawless · mass extinctions · Carboniferous · scorpion · amphibian · millipede · ancient · coal · primordial · limestone · Gondwana · fish