What is the Paleozoic era (Phanerozoic Eon)?

The Paleozoic era is bracketed by two of the most important events in the history of animal life. At its beginning, multicelled animals underwent a dramatic "explosion" in diversity, and almost all living animal phyla appeared within a few millions of years. At the other end of the Paleozoic, the largest mass extinction in history wiped out approximately 90% of all marine animal species. The causes of both these events are still not fully understood and the subject of much research and controversy. Roughly halfway in between, animals, fungi, and plants colonized the land, and the insects took to the air.

The Paleozoic era took up over half — approximately 300 million years — of the Phanerozoic. During the Paleozoic there were six major continental land masses; each of these consisted of different parts of the modern continents. For instance, at the beginning of the Paleozoic, today's western coast of North America ran east-west along the equator, while Africa was at the South Pole. These Paleozoic continents experienced tremendous mountain building along their margins, and numerous incursions and retreats of shallow seas across their interiors. Large limestone outcrops, like the one pictured here, are evidence of these periodic incursions of continental seas. The Paleozoic Era is bracketed by the times of global super-continents. The era opened with the breakup of the world-continent Pannotia and closed with the formation of Pangea, as the Earth's continents came together once again.

Many Paleozoic rocks are economically important. For example, much of the limestone quarried for building and industrial purposes, as well as the coal deposits of western Europe and the eastern United States, were formed during the Paleozoic.

The Paleozoic is divided into six periods: the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian. Most of these names derive from locations where rocks of these ages were first studied.