The last 550 million years of Earth history, spanning the entire time for which the fossils are abundant due to their large size, durable skeletons and mineralised parts (shells, bones etc.) that constitute the bulk of the fossil record. The Phanerozoic eon is subdivided into three long eras and eleven relatively short periods. The subdivision is based on the study of the fossils. Phanerozoic fossil record was the major object of the study during almost two centuries of the paleontology as a science.