Paleozoic Era
Calendar years - 372 years long
Atomic Years - 479 million years long
Atomic, or Geologic Years ago Geological period Calendar, or orbital, years before Christ Calendar, or orbital years after creation Biblical events
Gen. 10:1-21;
11:1-9582 – 488 million Cambrian 3418-3377 2392-2433 488 – 443 million Ordovician 3377-3342 2433-2468 443 – 416 million Silurian 3342-3321 2468-2489 416 – 359 million Devonian 3321-3277 2489-2533 359 – 299 million Carboniferous 3277-3231 2533-2579 299 – 251 million Permian 3231-3182 2579-2628 Nimrod builds Babel
251 millionPermian Extinction 3182 2628 Babel Crisis
At the close of this era, the speed of light was 1.2 million times its current speed.
Post-Flood geological activity was seen primarily in two phases: first, the uplifting of and emplacement of granites in the troughs containing the sediments from the cratons. Then, as these areas rose and stabilized to form the mid-Paleozoic shield areas, continued activity occurred around the supercontinental margins. It can be seen in the geological evidence that the primary earth movements at this time were vertical, as the pressures internally sought some kind of equilibrium. There was still internal heating going on, and this was causing the formation of magma and expansion of the interior which was evidencing itself in these granite emplacements and vertical motions. This is in contrast to the horizontal activity which occurred later, resulting in the dividing continents. This geologic activity continued during the entire Paleozoic Era. It was this activity around the geologically active areas which gave us the fossilized evidence referred to as the “Cambrian Explosion” – these are all organisms which were living in the geologically active areas and buried by slide activities which resulted from neighboring uplifts. The chemically rich material in the still extruding water as well as the slides enabled the fossilization to occur.
This entire era is characterized by post-Flood influences. The ground was wet and marshy in many areas. The climate was humid. The seas themselves now contained a good many warm water currents. This environment favored the algae, mosses, and ferns. These plants are spore-bearers which could reproduce rapidly in this new world and soon became dominant. They were also very amenable to living in the very areas which were subject to the geological activity which buried them, thus giving us the ‘typical’ fossils of this series of strata.
Any floating vegetation mats which drifted near land would have enabled the insects and amphibians to get to that land, and thus we see a great number of their fossils in those very areas where the greatest continuing geological activity was. It should also be noted that the conditions in these areas were exactly those in which these animals would thrive. Evidence of their ability to thrive here can be seen in the enormous sizes of some of them which we see in rocks today. Other plants and animals were still alive but not only were they in the minority, but their habitable zones were not near these geologically active areas. Thus we would not expect to find them fossilized in the muds from this time and in these places.
Due to the axis tilt which occurred during the Flood, caused either by asteroid hits in conjunction with the force of the exploding waters over land, or simply due to the exploding waters themselves, polar regions were formed, causing a high temperature gradient which led to fierce winds and storms. The only polar land was at the south of the super-continent. The storms swept over it, dumping enormous amounts of snow and ice. The evidence of this can today be seen in Permian strata.
Throughout the Paleozoic era, the interior heating of the earth built as radioactive elements continued decaying. The water which had explosively erupted at the time of Noah had relieved the internal pressure for awhile, but pressure was building again. Rocks were becoming molten in the earth’s interior and pooling into large reservoirs of magma under enormous pressure. This resulted in a sudden massive series of volcanic outbursts which may have been precipitated by an impact from a large asteroid or series of asteroids. Genesis 11:5 records that the “Lord came down” and other references in the Bible, such as that in Psalm 18, indicate that the Lord ‘coming down’ was something associated with catastrophic events.
Accompanying this rampant volcanism were huge earth movements, tsunamis, and the creation of an enormous trough which ran across what is now Europe and eastern United States. The tsunamis washed great amounts of vegetation down into this trough and it is this which we see as the large coal seams of these areas today. Australian Aboriginal legends are interesting here, as they link together human migration, language division, the creation of coal, and volcanism as a complete entity. Unlike the Deluge of Noah, we don’t know how many men died in this catastrophe. We do know that an enormous number of marine species are never seen again in the fossil record. We do know that massive human – and possible animal – migrations occurred as a result of this.