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Pliocene epoch
Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
Pliocene epoch , fifth epoch of the Cenozoic era...million years ago. By the beginning of the Pliocene, the outlines of North America were almost...preceding Miocene epoch , in California. The Pliocene formations on the Atlantic coast are chiefly...
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Pliocene
Book article from: The Oxford Companion to the Earth
Pliocene In 1833 Charles Lyell proposed to use the rate...proportion of extant forms increasing with time. The Pliocene was one of his original divisions of time, itself divided into Newer Pliocene with 90 per cent of its mollusc species living...
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Messinian salinity crisis
Book article from: The Oxford Companion to the Earth
...through several hundred metres of pelagic Pliocene and Holocene beds into very thick evaporites...breached by a rise in sea level as the Pliocene period began. The Messinian salts were...argillaceous capping beds from solution by the Pliocene waters. Whether or not the rise of Atlantic...
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Pleistocene
Book article from: The Oxford Companion to the Earth
...superficial deposits, thus rest upon the Pliocene and older rock formations. Pleistocene...Pleistocene, under the name ‘Newer Pliocene’, based upon exposures of...Villafranchian has been considered as Pliocene, largely on account of its fossil mammal...
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ice-age theories
Book article from: The Oxford Companion to the Earth
...increased ice growth in Antarctica, while the decrease in the late Pliocene is probably due to ice build-up on the continents of the northern hemisphere. Dealing with the Late Pliocene cooling in more detail, recent oxygen isotope analysis of deep...
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Tertiary period
Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
...Tertiary are the Paleocene , Eocene , Oligocene , Miocene , and Pliocene epochs . Sometimes the Paleocene is included in the Eocene...Miocene epochs, the continents being generally emergent in the Pliocene epoch. The Tertiary formations of either unconsolidated sediments...
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Man
Book article from: The Oxford Companion to the Earth
...Ardipithecus ramidus, was found in a 4.4 million-year-old (Pliocene) horizon in Ethiopia. The pelvis and leg bones of A. ramidus...Australopithecus contains three species, all from African Pliocene sites: A. anamensis, known only from Kenya in beds between...
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Miocene epoch
Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
...Washington, Oregon, N California, and N Nevada was formed by a great outpouring of lava, which continued in the succeeding Pliocene epoch. During the Miocene most of N Europe was elevated, but marine waters covered E Spain, S France, Italy, and a depressed...
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Dinotherium
Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
...Gr.,=terrible beast], extinct mammal related to the elephant, fossil remains of which have been found in Miocene and Pliocene formations of Africa, Europe, and India. It had a short proboscis and a pair of tusks which extended downward, curving...
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Cenozoic era
Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
...of a few specialized types, in the Quaternary period . Theories explaining the decline or extinction of mammals during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs of the quaternary have ranged from a change in climate to the predation of humans. Cenozoic land mammals...
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