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[18] [19] The Pleistocene covers the recent period of repeated glaciations. The name Plio-Pleistocene has, in the past, been used to mean the last ice age. Formerly, the boundary between the two epochs was drawn at the time when the foraminiferal species Hyalinea baltica first appeared in the marine section at La Castella, Calabria, Italy. [20]
The Holocene is a geologic epoch that follows directly after the Pleistocene. Continental motions due to plate tectonics are less than a kilometre over a span of only 10,000 years. However, ice melt caused world sea levels to rise about 35 m (115 ft) in the early part of the Holocene and another 30 m in the later part of the Holocene.
Megafauna of the Pleistocene (mammoths, cave lions, woolly rhinos, reindeer, horses) The Quaternary spans from 2.58 million years ago to present day, and is the shortest geological period in the Phanerozoic Eon. It features modern animals, and dramatic changes in the climate. It is divided into two epochs: the Pleistocene and the Holocene.
Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate between glacial periods. The Last Glacial Period ended about 15,000 years ago. [1] The Holocene is the current interglacial. A time with no glaciers on Earth is considered a greenhouse climate state. [2] [3] [4]
During the Pliocene epoch (5.3 to 2.6 million years ago (Ma)), the Earth's climate became cooler and drier, as well as more seasonal, marking a transition between the relatively warm Miocene to the cooler Pleistocene. [19] However, the beginning of the Pliocene was marked by an increase in global temperatures relative to the cooler Messinian.
During the Pleistocene, Middle Stone Age peoples (e.g., Iwo Eleru people, [4] possibly Aterians), who dwelled throughout West Africa between MIS 4 (71,000 BP) and MIS 2 (29,000 BP, Last Glacial Maximum), [5] were gradually replaced by incoming Late Stone Age peoples, who migrated into West Africa [6] as an increase in humid conditions resulted ...
These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. [12] An alternative proposed scenario involves migration, either on foot or using boats, down the Pacific coast to South America. [13]
The Middle Paleolithic was in the geological Chibanian (Middle Pleistocene) and Late Pleistocene ages. According to the theory of the recent African origin of modern humans , anatomically modern humans began migrating out of Africa during the Middle Stone Age/Middle Paleolithic around 125,000 years ago and began to replace earlier pre-existent ...