Geologic History of New York State · Earth and Space Sciences Reference Tables (ESSRT)

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The Geologic History of New York State chart from the Reference Tables for Earth and Space Sciences (ESSRT) is a geologic time scale that sets New York's rock and fossil record against the history of life and of Earth as a whole. It primarily supports HS-ESS2-7.

What the Geologic History of New York State chart shows

The left side covers the Precambrian, beginning with the origin of Earth and the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, with events such as the formation of the Moon, the oldest known rocks, the oldest evidence of life, the Oxygen Revolution and the Grenville orogeny. The main chart divides the Phanerozoic Eon, the last 539 million years, into eras, periods and epochs with their boundary ages, and lists major events in the history of life beside them, including five mass extinctions. Bars show when groups such as corals, brachiopods, trilobites, eurypterids and vertebrates lived, and lettered circles mark index fossils, which are drawn along the bottom of the chart. Further columns give the New York rock record, important geologic events in New York (among them the Taconian, Acadian and Alleghenian orogenies, the intrusion of the Palisades sill and the advance and retreat of the last continental ice) and the inferred positions of Earth's landmasses at five times between 458 and 50 million years ago.