Eras

Hadean

HAY-dee-un

Citation Formats

General Reference

Earth and Environment Atlas. "Hadean." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://earth.interactiveatlas.org/eras/hadean.

APA Style

Earth and Environment Atlas. (n.d.). Hadean. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://earth.interactiveatlas.org/eras/hadean

BibTeX

@misc{earthandenvironmentatlas-hadean,
  author = {Earth and Environment Atlas},
  title = {Hadean},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://earth.interactiveatlas.org/eras/hadean},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The oldest eon, from the planet's formation to the appearance of the first solid continental crust in the rock record. Named for Hades: a young Earth of magma oceans and relentless impacts, hostile enough that almost nothing from it survived to be read today.

Facts

Rank

Eon 1

Start (Million Years Ago)

4600 1

Earth's formation; the conventional start of geologic time itself, so there is no older bound to date against.

End (Million Years Ago)

4000 1

Key Event

Earth's accretion and differentiation into core, mantle and crust; no confirmed rock record survives from most of this eon. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

In Discipline

Geochronology

Source Geologic Time Scale (Wikipedia)

Sources

1. Geologic Time Scale (Wikipedia)

Wikimedia FoundationView the Source

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