Prehistoric means before written history. Humans have been writting for only about 5000 years. This is a mere snap of the fingers in geologic time. Scientist believe the Earth to be at least 4.6 billion years old and maybe as old as 6 billion years. Geologic time marks the period from the birth of the planet Earth to the time of written history.

Geologists use "life" as a way of measuring how old layers of the Earth are. "Life" means plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and monerans that were once alive but are now fossils found in rock. Fossils are the remains of plants and animals that have been preserved in rock. Fossils are usually a skeleton, shell, or plant fiber that has been buried and turned into rock over time. Fossils can also be tracks and traces of these animals, or in some rare cases, the actual plant or animal can be preserved, such as an insect preserved in amber.

The photo above shows a trilobite fossil preserved in rock.

Geologists use fossils to determine the age of the rock layer that it was found in. We know that if a fossil once lived on Earth 260 million years ago, the layer that it was fossilized in must be at least 260 million years old. Geologists can then determine that layers around the world that contain that same fossil must be 260 million years old.

The first life appearred about 3.2 billion years ago in the form of algae, a simple single celled plant. Scientists know that life on Earth has changed over time and that the life has become increasingly more complex. Scientists also know that these changes didn't occur over night, sometimes it took millions of years for these plants and animals to evolve.

Scientists use two major types of events to break up the Earth's history. These events are biological changes and physical changes.

Click on the "Next" to see another example of a fossil!