Question 1

How do you say Neogene?

Accepted Answer

Neogene is pronounced NEE-oh-jeen. Say it in three parts: NEE, then oh, then jeen, with the stress on that first syllable NEE. It rhymes roughly with the end of the word trampoline. Once you say it a couple of times it sticks really easily.

Question 2

What does Neogene mean?

Accepted Answer

Neogene comes from two Ancient Greek words. Neo means new or recent, and gene comes from genos meaning birth or origin. So Neogene basically means new origin or new birth. Austrian scientist Moritz Hornes chose the name in 1853 to describe what he saw as a newer, more modern chapter in Earth's rock record compared to the older Paleogene Period.

Question 3

When was the Neogene Period?

Accepted Answer

The Neogene Period ran from 23.04 million years ago to 2.58 million years ago, making it about 20.45 million years long. It is divided into two smaller time chunks called the Miocene epoch and the Pliocene epoch. It came right after the Paleogene Period and ended when the Quaternary Period began with the start of the great ice ages.

Question 4

What animals lived during the Neogene?

Accepted Answer

The Neogene was packed with incredible animals. Megalodon, the largest shark ever, ruled the oceans. On land, enormous ground sloths, saber-toothed cats, three-toed horses, and giant rhinos roamed across different continents. Most importantly for us, the very first members of our own genus Homo appeared right at the end of the Neogene, about 2.8 million years ago in Africa.

Question 5

Did humans exist during the Neogene?

Accepted Answer

Not quite, but we were getting very close. The great apes, including the ancestors of chimpanzees and humans, were diversifying throughout the Neogene. The genus Homo, which includes modern humans, first appeared around 2.8 million years ago, right at the very end of the Neogene Period. Our species, Homo sapiens, came much later, only about 300,000 years ago, well into the following Quaternary Period.

Question 6

What was the climate like during the Neogene?

Accepted Answer

The Neogene started relatively warm but got progressively cooler over millions of years. Early in the period, subtropical forests grew in places like Europe and North America that are now temperate or cold. As the period went on, the Antarctic ice sheet grew, sea levels dropped, and vast grasslands spread across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. By the end of the Neogene the planet was on the edge of the great ice age cycles we know from later history.

Question 7

What is the Messinian Salinity Crisis?

Accepted Answer

The Messinian Salinity Crisis was a jaw-dropping event that happened about 5.96 million years ago during the Neogene. The Mediterranean Sea got cut off from the Atlantic Ocean by tectonic movements, and it evaporated over thousands of years into a colossal salt desert sitting kilometers below sea level. Then about 5.33 million years ago the Atlantic burst back through at Gibraltar in a massive flood, refilling the entire Mediterranean basin. Scientists call that flood the Zanclean flood and it may have been one of the most dramatic geological events in the last few million years.

Question 8

What is the difference between Neogene and Paleogene?

Accepted Answer

Both the Neogene and Paleogene are periods within the Cenozoic Era, which is the age of mammals. The Paleogene came first, running from 66 million years ago to 23.04 million years ago. The Neogene followed directly after it. The Paleogene includes the dramatic recovery of life after the dinosaur extinction event, while the Neogene is when mammals really diversified into the forms closer to what we see today, including early human relatives.

Question 9

Is the Neogene the same as the Tertiary Period?

Accepted Answer

Not exactly. The Tertiary Period was an older, informal term that geologists used to cover a huge stretch of time. Scientists eventually replaced it with two more precise names: the Paleogene and the Neogene. Together those two periods cover the same time that Tertiary used to describe. The word Tertiary is no longer used as a formal scientific term, though you might still see it in older textbooks or museum displays.

Question 10

Who discovered the Neogene Period?

Accepted Answer

The term Neogene was coined in 1853 by Austrian palaeontologist Moritz Hornes, who lived from 1815 to 1868. He invented the name while studying fossils from rock layers in the Vienna Basin in Austria. He wanted a way to distinguish the younger, more modern-looking fossils from the older ones, and so he created the two terms Paleogene and Neogene to replace the old single category called the Tertiary.

Question 11

What caused the Neogene to end?

Accepted Answer

The Neogene ended 2.58 million years ago when global cooling crossed a major threshold and the great ice age cycles began in the Northern Hemisphere. There was no single catastrophic event like an asteroid. Instead, Earth's climate gradually shifted, and scientists can see a clear change in the rock and sediment record worldwide at this boundary. The period that followed, the Quaternary, is defined by repeated ice ages and is the period we technically still live in today.

Question 12

How long did the Neogene last?

Accepted Answer

The Neogene lasted approximately 20.45 million years, from 23.04 million years ago to 2.58 million years ago. To put that in perspective, that is more than 4,000 times longer than all of recorded human history. It is divided into two epochs: the longer Miocene at about 17.7 million years and the shorter Pliocene at about 2.75 million years.

Question 13

What continents existed during the Neogene?

Accepted Answer

During the Neogene the continents were already close to their modern positions, but a few big changes were still happening. North and South America were separate continents for most of the Neogene until the Isthmus of Panama formed around 3 million years ago and connected them. The Mediterranean Sea opened and closed dramatically during the Messinian Salinity Crisis. The collision of Africa with Europe was pushing up mountain ranges, and India's ongoing collision with Asia was continuing to raise the Himalayas.

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