Timeline of the evolutionary history of life

The similarities between all present day organisms imply a common ancestor from which all known species, living and extinct, have diverged.

[10] The first known mass extinction was the Great Oxidation Event 2.4 billion years ago, which killed most of the planet's obligate anaerobes.

Researchers have identified five other major extinction events in Earth's history, with estimated losses below:[11] Smaller extinction events have occurred in the periods between, with some dividing geologic time periods and epochs.

539 Ma – present The Phanerozoic Eon (Greek: period of well-displayed life) marks the appearance in the fossil record of abundant, shell-forming and/or trace-making organisms.

It is subdivided into three eras, the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic, with major mass extinctions at division points.

Visual representation of the history of life on Earth as a spiral
Moon
Fragment of the Acasta Gneiss exhibited at the Museum of Natural History in Vienna
The cyanobacterial -algal mat, salty lake on the White Sea seaside
Halobacterium sp. strain NRC-1
Detail of the eukaryote endomembrane system and its components
Dinoflagellate Ceratium furca
Blepharisma japonicum , a free-living ciliated protozoan
Dickinsonia costata , an iconic Ediacaran organism , displays the characteristic quilted appearance of Ediacaran enigmata.
With only a handful of species surviving today, the Nautiloids flourished during the early Paleozoic era , from the Late Cambrian , where they constituted the main predatory animals. [ 71 ]
Haikouichthys , a jawless fish , is popularized as one of the earliest fishes and probably a basal chordate or a basal craniate . [ 72 ]
Ferns first appear in the fossil record about 360 million years ago in the late Devonian period. [ 73 ]
Synapsids such as Dimetrodon were the largest terrestrial vertebrates in the Permian period, 299 to 251 million years ago.
Utatsusaurus is the earliest-known ichthyopterygian .
Plateosaurus engelhardti
Cycas circinalis
For about 150 million years, dinosaurs were the dominant land animals on Earth.
Mount of oxyaenid Patriofelis from the American Museum of Natural History
The bat Icaronycteris appeared 52.2 million years ago
Grass flowers
Reconstructed skeletons of flightless terror bird and ground sloth at the Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro
Diprotodon went extinct about 40,000 years ago as part of the Quaternary extinction event , along with every other Australian creature over 100 kg (220 lb).
50,000 years ago several different human species coexisted on Earth including modern humans and Homo floresiensis (pictured).
American lions exceeded extant lions in size and ranged over much of North America until 11,000 BP.