What is Plio-Pleistocene boundary?
In natural exposures and drill cores from rocks and oceanic sediments at several localities throughout the world, the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary is based on evidence of climatic cooling followed by conspicuous fluctuation.
What is Pleistocene known for?
The Pleistocene Epoch is best known as a time during which extensive ice sheets and other glaciers formed repeatedly on the landmasses and has been informally referred to as the “Great Ice Age.” The timing of the onset of this cold interval, and thus the formal beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch, was a matter of …
What is a Pleistocene pluvial?
These lakes are pluvial in that they formed in response to more effective precipitation and runoff during Pleistocene cold stages, and have diminished in size and often desiccated under warmer drier Holocene conditions.
What is the Pleistocene ice age?
The Pleistocene epoch is a geological time period that includes the last ice age, when glaciers covered huge parts of the globe. Also called the Pleistocene era, or simply the Pleistocene, this epoch began about 2.6 million years ago and ended 11,700 years ago, according to the International Commission on Stratigraphy.
When was the Plio Pleistocene era?
The Plio-Pleistocene is an informally described geological pseudo-period, which begins about 5 million years ago (Mya) and, drawing forward, combines the time ranges of the formally defined Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs—marking from about 5 Mya to about 12 kya.
What does Quaternary mean in history?
Quaternary, in the geologic history of Earth, a unit of time within the Cenozoic Era, beginning 2,588,000 years ago and continuing to the present day.
Why is it called the Quaternary?
The term Quaternary originated early in the 19th century when it was applied to the youngest deposits in the Paris Basin in France by French geologist Jules Desnoyers, who followed an antiquated method of referring to geologic eras as “Primary,” “Secondary,” “Tertiary,” and so on.