Dates

In this website we show dates in the following formats.

ya means "years ago".

kya means "thousand years ago". K stands for kilo, the scientific name for thousand.

mya means "million years ago". A million is one thousand thousand.

bya means "billion years ago". One billion is one thousand million.

Note that geologists sometimes use the term Ga, meaning "giga-years ago", where giga is the scientific name for billion.