Bya
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
- The title of this article is incorrect because of technical limitations. The correct title is bya.
In astronomy, geology, and paleontology, bya is an acronym for billion years ago and is used as a unit of time to denote length of time before the present. Specifically, one bya is equal to 109 years ago.
The "billion" in bya is, by convention, the short-scale billion (109), not the long-scale billion (1012). For this reason, there is some potential for confusion, and some scientists prefer the unit Gya. However, bya remains in more widespread use.
It should be noted that like the related unit mya ("million years ago"), bya is traditionally written in lowercase. This is different from Gya, which capitalizes the first letter.
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