What is the first geological period of the Paleozoic era?
Paleozoic Paleozoic The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era (; from the Greek "palaios" (παλαιός), "old" and "zoe" (ζωή), "life", meaning "ancient life") is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. It is the longest of the Phanerozoic eras, lasting from , and is subdivided into six geologic periods (from oldest to youngest): the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian. The Paleozoic comes after the Neoproterozoic Era of the Proterozoic Eon and is followed by the Mesozoic Era. The Paleozoic was a time of dramatic geological, climatic, and evolutionary change. The Cambrian witnessed the most rapid and widespread diversification
Paleozoic Dying", the third and most severe mass extinction. Geologically, the Paleozoic started shortly after the breakup of the supercontinent Pannotia. Throughout the early Paleozoic, that landmass was broken into a substantial number of continents. Towards the end of the era, the continents gathered together into a supercontinent called Pangaea, which included most of the Earth's land area. The earliest two periods, the Ordovician and Silurian, were warm greenhouse periods, with the highest sea levels of the Paleozoic (200 m above today's); the warm climate was interrupted only by a cool period, the Early Palaeozoic Icehouse, culminating in the Huronian glaciation,