Many filter
feeders
Coal
swamps
Dry land is still
mostly barren
WAIT A TURN
Bacteria have already
been thriving for
billions of years
SILURIAN
NYA
NYA!
CLIMB
AHEAD 2
...on a
Lycopod
tree
CARBONIFEROUS
CAMBRIAN
First sizeable
animals in the
fossil record
- and you
slip on one!
GO BACK
ONE
SLIDE
BACK
to the past
on an animal
called
Charnia
Oldest
known
fossil
land animal:
a small millipede
Early land plant
fossils
DEVONIAN
Plants get bigger
EXTRA TURN
416
million years ago
No life
on land yet...
542
million years ago
st
1
First
trees!
Fungi
and bacteria
help make
first soils
359
million years ago
First multi-celled
ancestors of animals
and plants
You
get nipped by
Anomalocaris
WAIT A
TURN
444
million years ago
EDIACARAN
635
million years ago
art
t
s
N
ICIA
V
O
ORD
488 million years ago
Biggest
flying insect ever:
28" wing span
E
R
C
E
C
A
T
O
U
O
SURVIVE
BUT YOU'RE
SWARMING
WITH BACTERIA!
NYA NYA!
Ice ages, first
humans
X-TRA
TURN
First grasslands
Many new flowers
and pollinators
Therapsid
(NOT a dino)
200
million years ago
JURASSIC
NEOGENE
HO P
AHEAD
O NE
Chomped on
by T-REX!
on a giant
mammal
TRIASSIC
Very little diversity
as life recovers
251
million
years ago
First dino
Mammals
diversify
X-TRA
TURN
EO
PAL
Huge extinction
BACK YOU GO
created by Hannah Bonner, Cindy Looy, Ivo Duijnstee and other members
of the ETE program of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
E
GEN
Forests
slowly
recovered
First
mammal
dino-free fores
t
66 million years ago
23 million years ago
146
million years ago
PERMIAN
299
million years ago
First
birds
S
U
!
D
on Arthropleura,
a six-foot millipede!
Y
SLIDE BACK