Number of years ago:

CENOZOIC

Holocene

To 11000

Pleistocene

To 1.8 million

Modern man

Ice Ages.

Pliocene

To 5.3 million

Mammals with a placenta.

Ice at the poles, & Ice Ages.

Miocene

To 23.8 million

Marsupials & anthropoid (human-like) apes.

The African-Arabian plate joined to Asia. Antarctica becomes separated.

Ollgocene

To 33.7 million

Different species of cats, dogs & monkeys.

Eocene

To 54.8 million

Small, horse-like animals, tapirs, rhinoceroses, ruminants, whales, & early elephants.

Palaeocene

To 65 million

K-T boundary

MESOZOIC

Cretaceous

To 144 million

Angiosperms (flowering plants).

One world continent: 'Pangaea' continues to break up.

Jurassic

To 206 million

Giant dinosaurs & primitive birds. Modern reef-building corals.   

Pangaea starts to break up.

Triassic

To 248 million

Dinosaurs, turtles & mammals.

PALEOZOIC

Permian

To 290 million

Reptiles

One world continent: 'Pangaea'.

Carboniferous

To 354 million

Corals, crinoids, brachiopods & molluscs. Land vertebrates & winged insects.

Europe & N. America collided with Africa & S. America.Siberia collided with E. Europe.

Devonian

To 417 million

Jawed armoured fish, early sharks, & bony fish, wingless insects, blastoids, ammonites & amphibians.

Three major continents, (a lot under water): 1) Siberia. 2)  N. America & Europe. 3) S. America, Africa, Antarctica, India & Australia.

Silurian

To 443 million

Simple land plants. Sea scorpions, reef corals, cephalopods, & jawed fish.

Ordovician

To 490 million

Nautiloides, corals, crinoids, bryozoans, & pelecypods. Armoured jawless fish. Primitive vascular plants.

North of the Tropics mostly ocean. Most of the land together in the southern super continent 'Gondwana' & most of it under water.

Cambrian

To 543 million

Trilobites

Multiple collisions to the earth's crustal plates resulting in Gondwana.

PRECAMBRIAN

Vendian(Proterozoic)

To 650 million