The Boring Billion begins
Climate, chemistry and evolution all go quiet for a billion years — or so it long appeared.
- When
- Known to
- ± 100 million years
- Era
- Paleoproterozoic, Proterozoic
From about 1.8 billion years ago Earth enters an interval with no glaciations, little variation in carbon isotopes, static oxygen levels and scant evolutionary innovation in the fossil record. The name is deliberately provocative and increasingly disputed: eukaryotes diversified, sexual reproduction appeared and supercontinents assembled and broke apart during it. What is clear is that the wild swings of the Paleoproterozoic stopped, and did not resume for a very long time.