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I have reverted the page to remove the comment "Because it makes up roughly seven-eights of the earth's history, reffering to it as a singular time period is misleading." From the opening paragraph. If there is a debate about whether it ought to be called a 'time period' or not, then that ought to be mentioned in the article (with opposing views, if there are any, mentioned) it has no place in the opening paragraph, which is merely a summary of what the article is about. Cheers -- Monk Bretton 16:52, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) (PS there is only on f in referring).
The section labelled Precambrian era is a cut and paste job from the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. [1] I'll remove it. Matt 16:27, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
For clarity, the latest edition has:
An edit from April 26th of this year correctly cites some research on zircon crystals from 4400 million years ago. But attributing that age to existing "rock beds" (identified as a little older than 3800 Ma in the prior edit) is somewhat misleading, because the zircons are detrital -- they're grains that eroded out of pre-existing rocks. Those older rocks no longer exist, only the zircons do, so the oldest existing rock beds still only date to around 3800 Ma. I'll clarify this in the paragraph about the Hadean Eon. Cephal-odd 17:03, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
It says that earth is 4.5 million years old here, however I usualy seeit as 4.5 billion years old someone please clarify and correct if needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Basalock ( talk • contribs) 00:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
I might just be really ignorant, but in the opening paragraph there seems to be a terrible typo... the evolution of abundant macroscopic hard-shelled fossils. I didn't know that fossils could evolve ??? -- DragonGuyver 04:03, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
The Associated Press ran an article today about a fifth-grade student finding a mistake made by the Smithsonian that said the "Precambrian" was an "era". Already a couple of people have tried adding copies of the AP article to Precambrian. May I point out that articles on outside news sources are copyright those news sources. We can link to those sources, and cite them as references, but we should not copy them. See Wikipedia:Copyrights. I'm also unconvinced this event (as interesting as it may be to hear about) is relevant to the Wikipedia article on Precambrian. As described in the intro, it's "an informal name." If someone gets it wrong -- even an organization as important and respected as the Smithsonian -- that's not an earthshaking event. I'm posting here in order to open discussion as to whether it should be mentioned at all. I submit that if it is mentioned, it should be mentioned briefly (not giving the whole detail of the article) and not in the intro (which is supposed to give particularly essential information). (Note: For two of the news sites that contains the article, see here and [2].)-- Why Not A Duck 22:03, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
What are Precambrian Z rocks? This term is introduced without a link or explaination. WilliamKF ( talk) 18:48, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
Should we call the Precambrian a "supereon"? The term may be out there, but doesn't look like many stratigraphers use it to refer to the Precambrian. It's more common to speak informally of "Precambrian time". Moreover, some geologists have suggested a Geozoic supereon that overlaps considerably with the Precambrian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cephal-odd ( talk • contribs) 17:38, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
does this even matter?
The Precambrian has sometimes been referred to erroneously as an "Era", which is a subdivision of an eon.
why is this here? — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Bdoom (
talk •
contribs)
20:26, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
If we're settled on the Cambrian starting 542 million years ago then we need to ask when we consider geologic(al) time to have started. The article Age of the Earth would suggest we go for 4567 million years ago. That leaves us with a Precambrian supereon extending over some 4025 million years. If we do the math(s) then that gives us figure of 88.1% of all of geologic(al) time being constituted by the Precambrian - neither the 85% nor the 87% figure which have appeared on this page recently. Anyone care to offer up a different form of reasoning? thanks Geopersona ( talk) 20:04, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
I reversed an IP user's edit which appeared to me to be an error or vandalism, and I appear to have introduced some Skype formatting text into the article (see reference 9, Bleeker). I don't know how this happened and I don't seem to be able to correct it. Could someone else who watches this page (and who doesn't have Skype toolbar installed) please remove this extra text? I'm reluctant to keep trying myself in case I merely add more spurious formatting to the article. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks, Hallucegenia ( talk) 16:44, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
I removed this, since we shouldn't be predicting future events. I do think though, that we need to include something along these lines. Can anyone find a source for it happening already, or even just that these terms are preferable?-- 78.151.188.237 ( talk) 20:41, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
The animation above the infobox shows the break-up of the pangean super-continent to form the seven continets we have today. It is very nice, but since pangea wasn't formed until the Permian period, 299 – 251 million years ago, it isn't relavent. Could someone find something more apropriate? 81.187.148.35 ( talk) 11:33, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
The precambrian layer as I understand it is observed in the fossil record as having distinct species of fossils. Shouldn't such a list of species be provided here since it's so basic to what precambrian is? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.115.2.48 ( talk) 19:22, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
The infobox was not displaying the period's graphical timeline correctly, because there was no template for it. I created a redirect from Template:Precambrian graphical timeline to Template:Neoproterozoic graphical timeline to fix this. The larger question is, what is the difference between Precambrian and Neoproterozoic? --
Donald Albury
00:00, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Nevermind, turned off call to Precambrian graphical timeline, which doesn't exist. -- Donald Albury 00:13, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
I can't think of any Precambrian monuments. Can someone think of one? -- 198.248.159.19 ( talk) 17:37, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
It is unfortunate that this article now sports (at top right) an outwardly attractive graphic image titled 'Precambrian Period' and displaying a palaeoglobe as it does. Firstly the Precambrian time interval is not a 'period' in the ordinarily understood sense of the term used by geologists - at least we might put 'period' into inverted commas or else dispense with the term entirely. Secondly there is no one palaeogeographical layout which makes any sense at all for a time interval which represents nearly 9/10 of the Earth's history and for a part of which there were no differentiated regions of continental and oceanic crust. Anyone else care to comment? cheers Geopersona ( talk) 19:36, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
As clearly visible, the article contains a template that does not exist. Please fix this to one that does. The Average Wikipedian ( talk) 13:54, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
I see there is a controversy over the naming of the Precambrian. Should it be an Eon or SuperEon or not used at all? The colors adopted for the Eons, Eras, etc and shown here: http://www.stratigraphy.org/ICSchart/ChronostratChart2016-04.pdf unfortunately they use the same color for the Precambrian as well as the Proterozoic Eon, at least that is how it appears to my eyes. In the article, the color dark green is used to mark the Precambrian but the title bar is shown using the color adopted and used in the ICS chart. Should we change the color of that Precambrian title and if so how? I hesitate to edit a feature of WP that seems very basic to many articles. If the International Commission on Stratigraphy can't make up their minds how to label the Precambrian, or what color to use, then maybe we should be so bold as to do it for them. Personally, I think the dark green employed is best and we should use the term Supereon. In addition, perhaps the text "Precambrian" could be added to the verticle green bar to make things clearer. Zedshort ( talk) 18:56, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
Current text contains: "the first complex multicellular life forms seem to have appeared at roughly 1500 Ma, in the Neoproterozoic era of the Proterozoic eon."
But according to the illustration and to the article on Neoproterozoic, the Neoproterozoic began only 1000 Mya, so the quoted sentence is at least confusing.
Also, is "complex multicellular" pleonastic. I'm no expert in this area so just askin'. 83.162.131.112 ( talk) 06:58, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
The lead says the Precambrian began about 4.6 billian years ago. The Overview section says the Earth coalesced at roughly 4,543 Ma. The infobox gives the beginning date as 4567.3 +_ 0.16 Ma. That very precise date is taken from [1], which also has a chart displaying the date in a rounded form, 4567 Ma. Should all the mentions of the beginning date for the Precambrian use the precise 4,567.30 ± 0.16 Ma, or would the rounded form, 4,567 Ma, be more reader friendly? Also, the date of the coalescence of the Earth should be no later than the date of the beginning of the Precambrian (I have not looked for sources for that).
References
2022/10 - Hadean: GSSA instated as ratified by IUGS (5-10-2022). The GSSA is 4,567.30 ± 0.16 Ma.