Quaternary Period "Age of Humans"

Divided into the early quaternarty period (3 mil years ago - 10000 years ago) and current (10000 years ago - Present)

LGM.jpg (142623 bytes)
LGM.jpg (142623 bytes)

Continents change into present forms


Known for its megafauna or “giant mammals.” Along with the wooly mammoth and wooly rhinoceros there were other giants: bison, ground sloths, and deer. There were giant carnivores as well. The saber tooth tiger, cave bear, and dire wolf were bigger than their modern counterparts. The megafauna disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene (After the Ice Age). All that remains are a few species of smaller, though still good-sized, animals in Africa: the elephant, hippopotamus, and rhinoceros. Animals that remained evolved into their present form.

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The Quaternary period saw the global temperature continue to fall, culminating in what is known as the Ice Age. Actually there is not one Ice Age but a whole series of glacial periods (principally in the Northern Hemisphere) interspersed by warm, even tropical, inter-glacials. And even the glacial periods themselves are divided into colder phases and temperate interstitials. This marked climatic oscillation is superimposed on the long-term global cooling that began in the mid-Tertiary. The most recent cycle ended only about 12,000 years ago. Plants in this period were basically modern flora, with successive communities according to climatic change.

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Mass Extinction Causes and Impacts on life on Earth

After the Ice Age came to a close, Megafauna such as mammoths and other ice age animals died out. Some studies suggest that early humans had hunted megafauna to extinction. We are the cause of this extinction. When the megafauna died out, other subspecies and animals took their places and evolved into their present forms.

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