Note to moderator: Read the answerline carefully. This system’s 2012 update rejected calibration from SHRIMP analyses with the “Sri Lanka 13” standard. Thomas Halliday described places separated by this system in Otherlands. New Zealand’s regional version of this system uses a series named for Wanganui. Siegfried Zielinski’s pioneering book on media archaeology borrows a term for the scope of this system coined by John McPhee in Basin and Range. Part of this system is disparaged as the “Boring Billion.” “Early” sections of this intangible system are demarcated at the “lower” limits of corresponding biozones by “golden spikes.” This system’s divisions, which are measured in mya (“M-Y-A”) and include the Guadalupian, correspond to global boundaries set by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. For 10 points, what system of divisions of the Earth’s past defines the Silurian and Mesozoic? ■END■
ANSWER: geological time scale [or geological past; accept deep time; accept geological time periods, geological epochs, geological eras, or eons; accept geochronology or chronostratigraphy or word forms; prompt on stratigraphy, strata, geology, geological, or earth science by asking “what intangible system does it define?”; prompt on time, past, chronology, periodization, epochs, or eras; prompt on GTS by asking “what does that stand for?”] (SHRIMP is a sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe used to date zircon.)
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= Average correct buzz position