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Take a closer look at the monsters we've investigated
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What fossils tell us
Collecting fossils
Glossary
Timeline
Era Period/epoch Million years ago Big Dig Fossils / Significant events
Cenezoic Holocene 0.01 Modern man
Pleistocene 2 Mammoths
Sabre tooths

Early hominids
Pliocene 5  
Miocene 25  
Oligocene 38  
Eocene 55  
Palaeocene 65  
Mesozoic Cretaceous 144 Mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous marks end of the 'Age of Reptiles' and the Mesozoic era

Pterosaur
Iguanadon
Leedsichthys
Titanosaur eggs
Jurassic 213  
Triassic 248  
Palaeozoic Permian 286 Mass extinction at the end of the Permian wipes out 90% of species and marks the end of the Palaeozoic era
Carboniferous 360  
Devonian 408  
Silurian 438  
Ordovician 505  
Cambrian 590 Organisms with hard parts develop, so that the first common fossils begin to form about 550 million years ago
Precambrian More than 1,000 Earliest multi-cellular organisms
  3,850 Earliest single-celled organisms
  4,600 Earth formed

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