Everything has its pecking order, and geology is no exception. The cocks of the rocks are the big, swaggering periods of the past that fill books, television programmes and natural-history museums.

The Triassic period stands out in Earth’s history as the time when dinosaurs first evolved. It was followed by the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods – at the end of the latter, the dinosaurs were wiped ...

A group of scientists has chosen a small lake near the U.S.-Canada border as the site that best represents the Anthropocene Epoch—a proposed period of geologic time marked by humans’ drastic impact on ...

Nilpena Ediacara National Park in South Australia is well known for its collection of fossils from the Ediacaran period—a geologic timespan that predates the Cambrian explosion. An international team ...