The Pléistocène is the third time of the system Néogène. It began it there has 1,806 million years and finished there is 11 430 years. It covers the majority of the recent Glaciations including the recent Dryas which stopped the last deglaciation temporarily.
The stratigraphic layer of reference is located at Vrica in Calabria (Italy).
Pleistocene is preceded by the Pliocène and is followed Holocène.
As for the other geological periods the stratigraphic layers of beginning and end of Pleistocene are well defined but their dating is approximate. In the beginning Pleistocene covered all the recent glaciations but its beginning was placed too late so that some of its glaciations are placed at Pliocène. Certain scientists think for this reason that it would be necessary to place the departure of Pleistocene towards 2,5 million years before the Christian era.
. Currently Fr: fact the dead end on the faunal training course , it will be necessary to introduce that. -->
The continents probably derived from less than 100 km compared to the position which they occupied at the beginning of Pleistocene, to occupy of the sites very close to their current location.
The climate is characterized by the cycles of glaciation during which continental glaciers are descended until the parallel 40e.
There were four major glaciations:
- Günz/Nebraska;
- Mindel/Kansas;
- Riss/Illinois;
- Würm/Wisconsin.
There can have been fourteen others of the ices which were not named and whose traces were largely eroded by the following glaciations. Each glaciation produced continental glaciers of big sizes of which the thickness could go up to 3 km resulting in changes from the sea level of 100 m or more.
Antarctica was ice-bound throughout the Pleistocene ace well ace the preceding Pliocene Period. --> The marine animal-life and continental were primarily modern and it is during this period that the man evolved/moved in his modern form. Several species of large mammals such as the Mammoth S, the Mastodon S and the tigers with teeth of saber, disappeared during pleistocene. The extinctions were more numerous in North America where, for example, the horses and the camels were eliminated.
The continental deposits of this period are found mainly in the caves and the funds of the lakes like in the great quantities of materials moved by the glaciers. The marine deposits are localized in a zone of a few tens of kilometers of the current coasts. In some active geological zones as the southern part of the California these marine deposits can be found at an altitude of several hundred meters.
The end of Pleistocene corresponds at the end of the Paléolithique used in Archéologie.
See too
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Simple: Pleistocene
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