Geologists often need to know the age of material that they find. They use absolute dating methods, sometimes called numerical dating, to give rocks an actual date, or date range, in numbers of years. This is different to relative dating, which only puts geological events in time order.

What is the next era called?

Geological era The next-larger division of geologic time is the eon. The Phanerozoic Eon, for example, is subdivided into eras.