The boundaries of the Tertiary were originally only qualitatively estimated on the basis of the percentages of living species of (primarily) mollusks in the succession of marine strata in the western European basins (see above). The need for more precise correlations of Mesozoic and Cenozoic marine strata in Europe led to the concept of stages, which was introduced in 1842 by French paleontologist Alcide d’Orbigny. These stages were originally defined as rock sequences composed of distinctive assemblages of fossils that were believed to change abruptly as a result of major transgressions and regressions of the sea. This methodology has since been improved and refined, but it forms the basis for modern biostratigraphic correlation. Early attempts at global correlations of strata were made by direct comparisons with the faunas in the type areas in Europe; however, it was soon realized that faunal provincialization led to spurious correlations. In 1919 an independent set of percentages for the Indonesian region was proposed, which was subsequently modified into the so-called East India Letter Stage classification system based on the occurrence of taxa of larger foraminiferans.

Since about the mid-1900s, increasing efforts have been made to apply radioisotopic dating techniques to the development of a geochronologic scale, particularly for the Cenozoic Era. The decay of potassium-40 to argon-40 (see potassium-argon dating) has proved very useful in this respect, and refinements in mass spectroscopy and the development of laser-fusion dating involving the decay of argon-40 to argon-39 have resulted in the ability to date volcanic mineral samples in amounts as small as single crystals with a margin of error of less than 1 percent over the span of the entire Cenozoic Era.

Also, since the mid-1960s, investigators have demonstrated that Earth’s magnetic field has undergone numerous reversals in the past. It is known that most rocks pick up and retain the magnetic orientation of the field at the time they are formed through either sedimentary or igneous processes. With the development of techniques for measuring the rock’s original orientation of magnetization, a sequence of polarity reversals has been dated for the late Neogene. In addition, a paleomagnetic chronology has been built for the entire Cenozoic. This work is based on the recognition that the magnetic lineations detected in rocks on the ocean floor were formed when basaltic magma had been extruded from the oceanic ridges. Earth’s magnetic polarity undergoes a reversal roughly every 500,000 years, and newly formed rocks assume the ambient magnetic polarity of the time. As a result, strips of normal and reversed polarity that reflect these magnetic reversals can be observed in deep-sea cores. The calibration of the composite geomagnetic polarity succession to time and the relation of this chronology to the isotopic time scale, however, have proved to be the greatest source of disagreement over various current versions of the geologic time scale. Calibrations of a time scale must ultimately be based on the application of meaningful isotopic ages to the succession of polarity intervals and geologic stages. A geochronologic scheme is thus an integration of several methodologies; it makes use of the best attributes of seafloor-spreading history (that is, the pattern of seafloor magnetic anomalies), magnetostratigraphy, and biostratigraphy in the application of relevant isotopic ages to derive a high-resolution and internally consistent time scale. The recent application of cyclical components driven by astronomical phenomena into the stratigraphic record, such as lithological couplets of marl and chalks and fluctuations in the ratios and percentages of fossil taxa, has resulted in fine-tuning the geologic time scale to a resolution of about 5,000 years in the late Neogene.

Micropaleontologists have created a number of zones based on the regional distribution of calcareous plankton (foraminiferans and nannoplankton) and those of the siliceous variety (radiolarians and diatoms), making it possible to correlate sediments from the high northern to high southern latitudes by way of the equatorial region. The resulting high-resolution zonal biostratigraphy and its calibration to an integrated geochronology provide the framework in which a true historical geology has become feasible.