Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Precambrian period spans from the formation of Earth approximately 4.6 billion years ago to the start of the Phanerozoic Eon 539 million years ago. This era represents 88 percent of Earth's entire history and is defined by the absence of hard-shelled life and a notoriously poor fossil record.
The Hadean Eon occurred from 4.567 billion to 4.031 billion years ago and was characterized by heavy bombardment and the collision of a Mars-sized body named Theia. This period saw the formation of the Moon and the creation of the earliest stable crust by 4.433 billion years ago.
Evidence for early life includes carbon found in 3.8 billion-year-old rocks from western Greenland and microscopic fossils of bacteria older than 3.46 billion years from Western Australia. These findings support the RNA world hypothesis and confirm the existence of cyanobacteria that triggered the oxygen catastrophe.
The Precambrian period experienced extreme glaciation events such as the Sturtian-Varangian glaciation between 850 and 635 million years ago and the Huronian epoch from 2400 to 2100 million years ago. These periods of global cooling occurred alongside the assembly and breakup of supercontinents like Rodinia.
The Ediacaran Period from 635 to 542 million years ago contained diverse soft-bodied forms known as the Ediacaran or Vendian biota. These creatures included early ancestors to modern animals and left the first recognizable fossil record of complex life before the Cambrian explosion.
Four major supercontinents formed during the Precambrian period including Vaalbara, Kenorland, Columbia, and Rodinia. Vaalbara formed 3.636 billion years ago while Rodinia assembled between 1300 and 900 million years ago before shattering into eight separate landmasses.