Geological history of Earth

Mountain formation refers to the geological processes that underlie the formation of mountains.

The Phanerozoic Eon (British English Phanærozoic) is the current geologic eon in the geologic time scale, and the one during which abundant animal and plant life has existed.

The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era (pronunciation: /ˌpeɪliəˈzoʊɪk, ˌpæ-/; from the Greek palaios (παλαιός), "old" and zoe (ζωή), "life", meaning "ancient life") is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon, from 541 to 252.

The Hadean (pronunciation: /ˈheɪdiən/) is a geologic eon of the Earth, and lies before the Archean.

The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pЄ) is the earliest 4.

The Proterozoic (pronunciation: /ˌproʊtərəˈzoʊɪk, prɔː-, -trə-/) is a geological eon representing the time just before the proliferation of complex life on Earth.

The Archean Eon (pronunciation: /ɑːrˈkiːən/, also spelled Archaean) is a geologic eon, 4,000 to 2,500 million years ago (4 to 2.5 billion years), that followed the Hadean Eon and preceded the Proterozoic Eon.

Vaalbara was an Archean supercontinent that consisted of the Kaapvaal craton, today located in eastern South Africa, and the Pilbara craton, today found in north-western Western Australia.

Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other, thus appearing to "drift" across the ocean bed.

Pangaea or Pangea (pronunciation: /pænˈdʒiːə/) was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras.

The biological and geological future of Earth can be extrapolated based upon the estimated effects of several long-term influences.

The Great Oxygenation Event (GOE, also called the Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Holocaust, Oxygen Revolution, or Great Oxidation) was the biologically induced appearance of dioxygen (O2) in Earth's atmosphere.

A mantle plume is a mechanism proposed in 1971 to explain volcanic regions of the Earth that were not thought to be explicable by the then-new theory of plate tectonics.