Phanerozoic. Timing[edit] The Proterozoic-Phanerozoic boundary is at 541.0 ± 1.0 million years ago.
In the 19th century, the boundary was set at time of appearance of the first abundant animal (metazoan) fossils. But several hundred groups (taxa) of metazoa of the earlier Proterozoic era have been identified since systematic study of those forms started in the 1950s. Most geologists and paleontologists would probably set the Proterozoic-Phanerozoic boundary either at the classic point where the first trilobites and reef building animals (archaeocyatha) such as corals and others appear; at the first appearance of a complex feeding burrow called Treptichnus pedum; or at the first appearance of a group of small, generally disarticulated, armored forms termed 'the small shelly fauna'.
Mesozoic era. Cenozoic era.