Geologic Time Scale

The landscape of the lower Nahe between Bad Sobernheim, Bad Kreuznach, and Bingen still essentially resembles how it was in the Oligocene period, 35 million years ago. At that time the valley was covered by an ocean, whose coastline ran along the bay of Kreuznach and the bay of Staudernheim (Bad Sobernheim) with an island archipelago in the south.

Mio. years	Cenozoic (Earth Modern Era)		Special Events
0.01	Holocene (Alluvium)	Quarternary
2.4	Pleistocene (Dilluvium)		first humans
5	Pliocene	Tertiary
23	Miocene
36	Oligocene
55	Eocene
65	Paleocene		Extinction of the last dinosaurs
	Mesozoic (Earth Middle Ages)
100	Upper Chalk	Cretaceous
140	Lower Chalk		first flowering plants
160	Malm (White Jurassic)	Jurassic	first pterosaurs and birds
170	Dogger (Brown Jurassic)
195	Lias (Black Jurassic)		Bloom of reptiles
205	Keuper	Triassic
215	Shell Limestone
225	Red Sandstone		first dinosaurs
	Paleozoic (Earth Antiquity)
235	Zechstein	Permian	highly developed reptiles
285	Red-Lying		first bone fish
325	Upper Carboniferous	Carboniferous	first reptiles
350	Lower Carboniferous
360	Upper Devonian	Devonian	first amphibians, wingless insects
370	Middle Devon
405	Lower Devon
440	Silur	Silurian	first land creatures
500	Ordoviz	Ordovician	first fish
515	Upper Cambrian	Cambrian
540	Middle Cambrian
570	Lower Cambrian		first animals with skeletons
	Precambrian (Earth Primeval)
1000		Riphaeus	shell-less molluscs, horn shells
2000		Proterozoic	lower aquatic plants
2800		Archean	Oxygen atmosphere
4000		Hadean	Beginning of biological development