Pleistocene

"The Ice Age" redirects here. For other uses, see Ice Age (disambiguation).

The Pleistocene stage or epoch was a long period of time. It stretched from 2.58 million years ago to 11,700 years ago.^[1] It is the first epoch of the Quaternary period and the sixth in the Cainozoic. It came after the Pliocene epoch, and before the modern-day Holocene.

The Pleistocene was a time of ice ages: cold glacial periods with shorter, warmer, interglacials. During these ice ages, the world became much colder for a long time.

For much of the 20th century, geologists believed there were four "major" ice ages. Nowadays scientists think there were at least five.^[2]

During these glaciations, much of the world we know was covered by ice: North America down to and past the Great Lakes; all of northern Russia and Europe; and England down to the Thames.

Many animals that lived during the Pleistocene have become extinct because of climate change and hunting by humans.^[3]

Many Pleistocene mammals were larger, cold-adapted versions of animals that live now. Mammoths were a species of elephant in the ice age. Their popular name of woolly mammoth suggests the long hair which was an adaptation to the cold.

Glyptodon was something like a giant armadillo.

Ancient human species lived during the Pleistocene. In Europe and Asia the large-brained Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) lived until about 30,000 years ago. Modern man did not descend from Neanderthals, but originated in Africa from another branch of the genus Homo.^[4]

• Ice age
• Global warming
• Human evolution
• Human timeline
• Palaeolithic