Information: - Western Australia (abbreviated as WA) is a state occupying the entire western third of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east. Western Australia is Australia's largest state with a total land area of 2,529,875 square kilometres (976,790 sq mi), and the second-largest country subdivision in the world however, a significant part of it is sparsely populated. The state has about 2.6million inhabitants, around 11% of the national total. 92% of the population lives in the south-west corner of the state. - The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets, with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies. Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury. - Oxygen is a chemical element with symbolO and atomic number8. It is a member of the chalcogen group on the periodic table and is a highly reactive nonmetal and oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as well as other compounds. By mass, oxygen is the third-most abundant element in the universe, after hydrogen and helium. At standard temperature and pressure, two atoms of the element bind to form dioxygen, a colorless and odorless diatomic gas with the formula . This is an important part of the atmosphere and diatomic oxygen gas constitutes 20.8% of the Earth's atmosphere. Additionally, as oxides the element makes up almost half of the Earth's crust. - An atmosphere is a layer of gases surrounding a planet or other material body, that is held in place by the gravity of that body. An atmosphere is more likely to be retained if the gravity it is subject to is high and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. - The Neoproterozoic Era is the unit of geologic time from . - The Proterozoic is a geological eon representing the time just before the proliferation of complex life on Earth. The name Proterozoic comes from Greek and means "earlier life", the Greek root protero-,means "former, earlier" and zoic-, means "animal, living being". The Proterozoic Eon extended from to (million years ago), and is the most recent part of the Precambrian Supereon. It is subdivided into three geologic eras (from oldest to youngest): the Paleoproterozoic, Mesoproterozoic, and Neoproterozoic. The well-identified events of this eon were the transition to an oxygenated atmosphere during the Paleoproterozoic; several glaciations, which produced the hypothesized Snowball Earth during the Cryogenian Period in the late Neoproterozoic Era; and the Ediacaran Period (635 to 541 Ma) which is characterized by the evolution of abundant soft-bodied multicellular organisms and provides us with the first obvious fossil evidence of life on earth. - Paleoproterozoic Era is the first of the three sub-divisions (eras) of the Proterozoic Eon spanning (2.51.6Ga). It was during this era that the continents first stabilized. - Earth, otherwise known as the world, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets. - Life is a characteristic distinguishing physical entities having biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased, or because they never had such functions and are classified as inanimate. Various forms of life exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. The criteria can at times be ambiguous and may or may not define viruses, viroids, or potential artificial life as "living". Biology is the primary science concerned with the study of life, although many other sciences are involved. - Preston Ercelle Cloud, Jr. (September 26, 1912 January 16, 1991) was an eminent American earth scientist, biogeologist, cosmologist, and paleontologist. He served in the United States Navy (in which he was a bantamweight boxing champion), and led several field explorations of the U.S. Geological Survey. In academia, he was member of faculty of Harvard University, University of Minnesota, University of California, Los Angeles, and lastly University of California, Santa Barbara. He was best known for his work on the geologic time scale and the origin of life on Earth, and as a pioneering ecologist and environmentalist. He was credited with coining the term "biogeology." His works on the significance of Cambrian fossils in the 1940s led to the development of the concept "Cambrian explosion," for which he coined the phrase "eruptive evolution." - The Mesoproterozoic Era is a geologic era that occurred from . The Mesoproterozoic was the first period of Earth's history of which a respectable geological record survives. Continents existed in the Paleoproterozoic, but we know little about them. It is noteworthy that the continental masses of the Mesoproterozoic are more or less the same ones that are with us today. - Walter Brian Harland (22 March 19171 November 2003) was a geologist at the University of Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences, England. In 1968, he was honoured with the Royal Geographical Society Gold Medal for Arctic exploration and research. - The Universe is all of time and space and its contents. It includes planets, moons, minor planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, and all matter and energy. The size of the entire Universe is unknown. - The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process.<ref name="doi10.1146/annurev-astro-081913-040012"></ref> It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. About three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen (~73%); the rest is mostly helium (~25%), with much smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon, and iron. - The Ediacaran Period, spans 94 million years from the end of the Cryogenian Period 635 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Cambrian Period 541 Mya. It marks the end of the Proterozoic Eon, and the beginning of the Phanerozoic Eon. It is named after the Ediacara Hills of South Australia. - The Archean Eon ( / rkin / , also spelled Archaean ) is a geologic eon , 4,000 to 2,500 million years ago , following the Hadean Eon and preceding the Proterozoic Eon . During the Archean , the earth 's crust and layers had just formed , making the Earth much cooler than it was during the Hadean and allowing the formation of continents . - The Cryogenian (from Greek "cryos" "cold" and "genesis" "birth") is a geologic period that lasted from . It forms the second geologic period of the Neoproterozoic Era, preceded by the Tonian Period and followed by the Ediacaran. - A terrestrial planet, telluric planet, or rocky planet is a planet that is composed primarily of silicate rocks or metals. Within the Solar System, the terrestrial planets are the inner planets closest to the Sun, i.e. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The terms "terrestrial planet" and "telluric planet" are derived from Latin words for Earth ("Terra" and "Tellus"), as these planets are, in terms of composition, "Earth-like". - A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes that shape it. Geologists usually study geology, although backgrounds in physics, chemistry, biology, and other sciences are also useful. Field work is an important component of geology, although many subdisciplines incorporate laboratory work. - The Snowball Earth hypothesis proposes that Earth's surface became entirely or nearly entirely frozen at least once, sometime earlier than 650 Mya (million years ago). Proponents of the hypothesis argue that it best explains sedimentary deposits generally regarded as of glacial origin at tropical palaeolatitudes, and other enigmatic features in the geological record. Opponents of the hypothesis contest the implications of the geological evidence for global glaciation and the geophysical feasibility of an ice- or slush-covered ocean, and emphasize the difficulty of escaping an all-frozen condition. A number of unanswered questions remain, including whether the Earth was a full snowball, or a "slushball" with a thin equatorial band of open (or seasonally open) water. - The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated p) is the earliest period of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian (colored green on the right) is a supereon that is subdivided into three eons (Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic) of the geologic time scale. It spans from the formation of Earth about 4.567 billion years ago (Ga) to the beginning of the Cambrian Period, about million years ago (Ma), when hard-shelled creatures first appeared in abundance. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of the Phanerozoic eon, which is named after Cambria, the Latinised name for Wales, where rocks from this age were first studied. The Precambrian accounts for 89% of geologic time. - The Hadean is a geologic eon of the Earth, and lies before the Archean. It began with the formation of the Earth about 4.6 billion years ago and ended, as defined by the ICS, 4 billion years ago. The geologist Preston Cloud coined the term in 1972, originally to label the period before the earliest-known rocks on Earth. W. Brian Harland later coined an almost synonymous term: the "Priscoan period". Other, older texts simply refer to the eon as the Pre-Archean. Nonetheless, in 2015, traces of carbon minerals interpreted as "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1-billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. What is the relationship between 'archean' and 'precambrian'?
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