Age distributions of 3597 VUDS galaxies computed from the combined fit of the spectroscopy and the photometry as described in Sect. 3. Top panel: the three distributions in red, hatched green, and filled grey histograms correspond to the three definitions of age we use in our paper and defined in Sect. 4, , , and , respectively. Bottom panel: age distributions of VUDS galaxies as a function of observed redshift z_obs. The three age definitions, , , and are presented in red, green, and grey, respectively. The line represents the age of the Universe in the ΛCDM cosmological model. The lowest age corresponds to the smallest possible age allowed by our model library (50 Myr). The upper limit is in general lower than the age of the Universe.