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| a microorganism, especially an archaean, that lives in conditions of extreme temperature, acidity, alkalinity, or chemical concentration. |
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| Relative dating is the science of determining the relative order of past events (i.e., the age of an object in comparison to another), without necessarily determining their absolute age (i.e. estimated age). |
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| The Hadean ( /ˈheɪdiən, heɪˈdiːən/ HAY-dee-ən, hay-DEE-ən) is a geologic eon of the Earth pre-dating the Archean. It began with the formation of the Earth about 4.6 billion years ago and ended, as defined by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), 4 billion years ago. |
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| relating to or denoting the aeon that constitutes the earlier (or middle) part of the Precambrian, in which there was no life on the earth. It precedes the Proterozoic aeon and (in some schemes) is preceded by the Priscoan aeon. |
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| relating to or denoting the eon that constitutes the later part of the Precambrian, between the Archean eon and the Cambrian period, in which the earliest forms of life evolved. |
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| relating to or denoting the eon covering the whole of time since the beginning of the Cambrian period, and comprising the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. |
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| The Paleozoic Era, which ran from about 542 million years ago to 251 million years ago, was a time of great change on Earth. The era began with the breakup of one supercontinent and the formation of another. Plants became widespread. And the first vertebrate animals colonized land. |
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| The Cambrian Period was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 55.6 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 541 million years ago to the beginning of the Ordovician Period 485.4 mya. |
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Ordovician Period
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| The Ordovician Period lasted almost 45 million years, beginning 488.3 million years ago and ending 443.7 million years ago. * During this period, the area north of the tropics was almost entirely ocean, and most of the world's land was collected into the southern supercontinent Gondwana. |
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| The Silurian is a geologic period and system spanning 24.6 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at 443.8 million years ago, to the beginning of the Devonian Period, 419.2 Mya. The Silurian is the shortest period of the Paleozoic Era. |
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| The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic, spanning 60 million years from the end of the Silurian, 419.2 million years ago, to the beginning of the Carboniferous, 358.9 Mya. It is named after Devon, England, where rocks from this period were first studied. |
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Carboniferous Period
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| he Carboniferous is a geologic period and system that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period 358.9 million years ago, to the beginning of the Permian Period, 298.9 Mya. |
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| The Permian is a geologic period and system which spans 47 million years from the end of the Carboniferous period 298.9 million years ago, to the beginning of the Triassic period 251.902 Mya. It is the last period of the Paleozoic era; the following Triassic period belongs to the Mesozoic era. |
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| The Mesozoic Era is the age of the dinosaurs and lasted almost 180 million years from approximately 250 to 65 million years ago. This era includes 3 well known periods called the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. A mass-extinction marked the beginning and end of the Mesozoic Era. |
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| The Triassic Period was the first period of the Mesozoic Era and occurred between 251 million and 199 million years ago. It followed the great mass extinction at the end of the Permian Period and was a time when life outside of the oceans began to diversify. |
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| The Jurassic is a geologic period and system that spanned 56 million years from the end of the Triassic Period 201.3 million years ago to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period 145 Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era, also known as the Age of Reptiles. |
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Cretaceous Period
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| Cretaceous Period, in geologic time, the last of the three periods of the Mesozoic Era. The Cretaceous began 145.0 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago; it followed the Jurassic Period and was succeeded by the Paleogene Period (the first of the two periods into which the Tertiary Period was divided). |
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| The Cenozoic Era, which began about 65 million years ago and continues into the present, is the third documented era in the history of Earth. The current locations of the continents and their modern-day inhabitants, including humans, can be traced to this period. |
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| Tertiary The older geological period of the Cenozoic era (compare Quaternary). It began about 65 million years ago, following the Cretaceous period, and extended to the beginning of the Quaternary, about 2 million years ago. |
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Quaternary Period
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| The Quaternary Period is a geologic time period that encompasses the most recent 2.6 million years — including the present day. ... The Quaternary Period has involved dramatic climate changes, which affected food resources and brought about the extinction of many species. |
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| Invertebrates are animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column, derived from the notochord. This includes all animals apart from the subphylum Vertebrata. Familiar examples of invertebrates include arthropods, mollusks, annelids, and cnidarians. |
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| all the waters on the earth's surface, such as lakes and seas, and sometimes including water over the earth's surface, such as clouds. |
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| The cryosphere is the frozen water part of the Earth system. Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska. One part of the cryosphere is ice that is found in water. This includes frozen parts of the ocean, such as waters surrounding Antarctica and the Arctic. There are places on Earth that are so cold that water is frozen solid. |
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| A genus is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, as well as viruses, in biology. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. |
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| Trilobites are a group of extinct marine arachnomorph arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest-known groups of arthropods. |
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| an organism consisting of a cell or cells in which the genetic material is DNA in the form of chromosomes contained within a distinct nucleus. Eukaryotes include all living organisms other than the eubacteria and archaebacteria. |
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| a microscopic single-celled organism that has neither a distinct nucleus with a membrane nor other specialized organelles. Prokaryotes include the bacteria and cyanobacteria. |
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| the branch of science concerned with fossil animals and plants. |
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| Phylogenetics is the study of evolutionary relationships among biological entities - often species, individuals or genes (which may be referred to as taxa ). |
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Chemosynthesizers
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| Chemosynthesizers. Any organism that creates organic matter with energy derived from chemical reactions. As opposed to plants, which derive their energy from the Sun, and animals, which derive their energy from digestion of other organisms. All chemosynthesizers are bacteria. |
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| a bacterium or other microorganism that grows best at higher than normal temperatures. |
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| A piezophile (from Greek "piezo-" for pressure and "-phile" for loving) is an organism with optimal growth under high hydrostatic pressure or, more operationally, an organism that have its maximum rate of growth at a hydrostatic pressure equal or above 10 MPa (= 99 atm = 1,450 psi), when tested over all permissible temperatures. |
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| Acidophiles or acidophilic organisms are those that thrive under highly acidic conditions (usually at pH 2.0 or below). These organisms can be found in different branches of the tree of life, including Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. |
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| Alkaliphiles are a class of extremophilic microbes capable of survival in alkaline (pH roughly 8.5–11) environments, growing optimally around a pH of 10. |
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| Halophiles are organisms that thrive in high salt concentrations. They are a type of extremophile organism. The name comes from the Greek word for "salt-loving |
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| a methane-producing bacterium, especially an archaean which reduces carbon dioxide to methane. |
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| Abiogenesis, or informally the origin of life, is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. |
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| the theory that life on the earth originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space and able to initiate life on reaching a suitable environment. |
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| a quantity representing the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere or in a gas. |
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| a hygrometer consisting of a wet-bulb and a dry-bulb thermometer, the difference in the two thermometer readings being used to determine atmospheric humidity. |
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