Paleozoic
Oldest of the three Phanerozoic eras, Cambrian through Permian.
Language and route: English scientific compound from Greek. Early spelling Palaeozoic; Greek-derived elements combined in nineteenth-century scientific English.
Literal gloss: ancient life
The name and its history
John Phillips · 1841
- What does the word literally mean?
- Greek palaiós, ‘old’, with a life-related -zoic element. John Phillips originally divided past life into broad faunal successions.
- What did the original author mean?
- Phillips meant the older broad assemblages of fossil life, not the oldest organisms ever.
- Why was the name needed?
- Regional rock formations needed comparison across unlike lithologies using their fossil assemblages.
- What evidence supported the original concept?
- Successive faunal associations across British and European fossiliferous strata supplied an empirical division.
- How has geology changed the concept?
- The Paleozoic starts at the formal Cambrian base, but abundant life and some complex life predate it.
Further historical context
John Phillips proposed a threefold history of fossil life in 1841: Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cainozoic. His scheme was developed partly to correlate unlike rock successions through their fossils rather than identifying time only from rock colour and lithology.
Its modern span, beginning at the Cambrian GSSP, was established long after Phillips’s work; the name does not imply no life preceded the Cambrian.
Editorial qualification
No known contested attribution identified in this pass; source checks remain subject to peer review.
Related names
Phanerozoic · Mesozoic · Cenozoic · Cambrian · Permian · Silurian · Fossil · Lithology
Sources
- ICS International Chronostratigraphic Chart, 2026/06 — Current name, rank and numerical boundaries
- Phillips (1841), Figures and Descriptions of the Palaeozoic Fossils — Digitised original source for three life-based eras
- Morrell (2001), Genesis and geochronology: John Phillips — Historical analysis of Phillips’s 1841 era scheme