The rise of life. Cambrian period (543 to 490 mya [i.e., million years ago]) ; Ordovician period (490 to 443 mya) ; Silurian period (443 to 417 mya) ; Devonian period (417 to 354 mya) ; Carboniferous period (354 to 290 mya) ; Permian period (290 to 248 mya) -- The age of reptiles. Triassic period (248 to 206 mya) ; Jurassic period (206 to 144 mya) ; Cretaceous period (144 to 65 mya) -- The age of beasts. Palaeocene epoch (65 to 55 mya) ; Eocene epoch (55 to 34 mya) ; Oligocene epoch (34 to 24 mya) ; Miocene epoch (24 to 5 mya) ; Pliocene epoch (5 to 1.8 mya) ; Pleistocene epoch (1.8 mya to 10,000 years ago)
Text and digitally-created illustrations cover more than one hundred of the earliest beasts with profiles on their physical characteristics, habitat, behavior, and distribution across prehistoric Earth