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The Quaternary System/Period: current status and future challenges

Martin J. Head, Philip Leonard Gibbard, Thijs van Kolfschoten

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Abstract

The Quaternary System/Period represents the past 2.58 million years and is officially subdivided into the Pleistocene and Holocene series/epochs, with the base of the Holocene assigned an age of 11,700 calendar years before AD 2000. The two lowest stages of the Pleistocene, the Gelasian (base 2.58 Ma) and the Calabrian (base 1.80 Ma), have been officially defined and these effectively constitute the Lower Pleistocene Subseries/Subepoch. The Middle and Upper Pleistocene have yet to be formally defined, representing an important future challenge along with the subdivision of the Holocene, consideration of the Anthropocene, and fine-scale subdivision elsewhere within the Quaternary. Keywords: Quaternary, Pleistocene, Holocene, Anthropocene, GSSP

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What this paper is about

The Quaternary System/Period represents the past 2.58 million years and is officially subdivided into the Pleistocene and Holocene series/epochs, with the base of the Holocene assigned an age of 11,700 calendar years before AD 2000. The two lowest stages of the Pleistocene, the Gelasian (base 2.58 Ma) and the Calabrian (base 1.80 Ma), have been officially defined and these effectively constitute the Lower Pleistocene Subseries/Subepoch. The Middle and Upper Pleistocene have yet to be formally defined, representing an important future challenge along with the subdivision of the Holocene, consideration of the Anthropocene, and fine-scale subdivision elsewhere within the Quaternary. Keywords: Quaternary, Pleistocene, Holocene, Anthropocene, GSSP

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Available abstract

The Quaternary System/Period represents the past 2.58 million years and is officially subdivided into the Pleistocene and Holocene series/epochs, with the base of the Holocene assigned an age of 11,700 calendar years before AD 2000. The two lowest stages of the Pleistocene, the Gelasian (base 2.58 Ma) and the Calabrian (base 1.80 Ma), have been officially defined and these effectively constitute the Lower Pleistocene Subseries/Subepoch. The Middle and Upper Pleistocene have yet to be formally defined, representing an important future challenge along with the subdivision of the Holocene, consideration of the Anthropocene, and fine-scale subdivision elsewhere within the Quaternary. Keywords: Quaternary, Pleistocene, Holocene, Anthropocene, GSSP

Key concepts: Quaternary, Holocene, Pleistocene, Anthropocene, Geology, Period (music), Paleontology, Archaeology

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