This concise handbook presents a summary of Earth's history over the past 4.5 billion years as well as a brief overview of contemporaneous events on the Moon, Mars and Venus. The authors have been at the forefront of chronostratigraphic research and initiatives to create an international geologic time scale for many years, and the charts in this book present the most up to date, international standard, as ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the International Union of Geological Sciences. This book is an essential reference for all geoscientists, including researchers, students, and petroleum and mining professionals. The presentation is non-technical and illustrated with numerous colour charts, maps and photographs. The book also includes a detachable laminated card of the complete time scale for use as a handy reference in the office, laboratory or field.

An international team of over forty stratigraphic experts have helped to build the most up-to-date international stratigraphic framework for the Precambrian and Phanerozoic. This successor to A Geologic Time Scale 1989 by W. Brian Harland et al. (CUP 0521 387655) begins with an introduction to the theory and methodology behind the construction of the new time scale. The main part of the book is devoted to the scale itself, systematically presenting the standard subdivisions at all levels using a variety of correlation markers. Extensive use is made of isotope geochronology, geomathematics and orbital tuning to produce a standard geologic scale of unprecedented detail and accuracy with a full error analysis. A wallchart summarising the whole time scale, with paleogeographic reconstructions throughout the Phanerozoic, is included in the back of the book. The time scale will be an invaluable reference source for academic and professional researchers and students.