Quaternary Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓The Quaternary began exactly 2.58 million years ago, a date so precise that geologists pinned it to a specific layer of sediment in a cliffside in Monte San Nicola, Sicily, called the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point.
• ✓During the Pleistocene Epoch of the Quaternary, there were at least 20 separate glacial cycles where massive ice sheets advanced and retreated across North America and Europe, each lasting roughly 100,000 years.
• ✓Woolly mammoths survived into the Quaternary so recently that some were still alive on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean as late as 4,000 years ago, meaning they coexisted with the ancient Egyptians who were building pyramids.
• ✓A proposed third epoch called the Anthropocene, meant to mark the era of heavy human impact on Earth, was officially rejected by the International Union of Geological Sciences in March 2024 after scientists voted 12 to 4 against it.
• ✓The Quaternary is by far the shortest of all geologic periods, spanning only 2.58 million years, while some periods like the Ordovician lasted over 40 million years, making the Quaternary a tiny sliver of deep time.