History of Earth

The history of Earth is the story of the past four and a half billion years of our planet. A very long time ago, Earth was a very hot ball of rock and lava. Over time, it cooled down and formed our land and oceans. Eventually, the first plants and animals started to live in the oceans. Life on land only emerged about 350 million years ago. Since then, many different kinds of plants and animals have come and gone and changed our world. We are the most recently arrived species on the planet and humans have been around for about 200,000 years.