A community effort towards an improved geological time scale Towards a new geological time scale: A template for improved rock-based subdivision of pre-Cryogenian time Graham A. Shields1*, Robin A. Strachan2, Susannah M. Porter3, Galen P. Halverson4, Francis A. Macdonald3, Kenneth A. Plumb5, Carlos J. de Alvarenga6, Dhiraj M. Banerjee7, Andrey Bekker8, Alexander Brasier9, Partha P. Chakraborty7, Kent Condie10, Kaushik Das11, Richard Ernst12, Anthony E. Fallick13, Hartwig Frimmel14, Reinhardt Fuck6, Paul F. Hoffman15, Balz S. Kamber16, Anton Kuznetsov17, Ross Mitchell18, Daniel G. Poiré19, Simon W. Poulton20, Robert Riding21, Mukund Sharma22, Craig Storey2, Eva Stueeken23, Rosalie Tostevin24, Elizabeth Turner25, Shuhai Xiao26, Shuanhong Zhang27, Ying Zhou1, Maoyan Zhu28 1Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, UK;
[email protected] 2School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences, University of Portsmouth, UK 3Department of Earth Science, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA 4Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, McGill University, Canada 5Geoscience Australia (retired), Canberra, Australia 6Instituto de Geociências, Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil 7Department of Geology, University of Delhi, India 8Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Riverside, USA 9School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen, UK 10New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, USA 11Department of Earth and Planetary System Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan 12Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University, Canada; Faculty of Geology and Geography, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia 13Isotope Geosciences Unit S.U.E.R.C., East Kilbride, UK 14Institute of Geography and Geology, University of Würzburg, Germany 15Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, USA; University of Victoria, Canada 16School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia 17Institute of Precambrian Geology and Geochronology, St.