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Animals and plants from the Tertiary period

Pliocene epoch

The Pliocene world looked very similar to Earth today as North and South America had been drifting ever closer and the gap between them was sealed in this epoch. At the start of the Pliocene, over 5 million years ago, the north polar ice cap came and went with the seasons and with fluctuations in climate. However, as the world cooled in the late Pliocene, ice at the North Pole became permanent and grassland and tundra thrived. The human lineage split away from the chimpanzees' early on in the epoch.

Began: 5.3 million years ago

Ended: 2.6 million years ago

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Causes of extinctions

During this period the following extinction level events are thought to have occurred.

Climate change Climate change
Earth's climate is not constant. Over geological time, the Earth's dominant climate has gone from ice age to tropical heat and from steamy jungles to searing deserts.

Types of fossils formed in this period

Trace fossils Trace fossils
It's not only the actual bodily remains of dead animals and plants that can become fossils. Things created or left behind by animals can also fossilise, such as their footprints, burrows and dung.

About

The Pliocene (pron.: /ˈplaɪ.əsiːn/; also Pleiocene) Epoch (symbol PO) is the period in the geologic timescale that extends from 5.332 million to 2.588 million years before present. It is the second and youngest epoch of the Neogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Pliocene follows the Miocene Epoch and is followed by the Pleistocene Epoch. Prior to the 2009 revision of the geologic time scale, which placed the 4 most recent major glaciations entirely within the Pleistocene, the Pliocene also included the Gelasian stage, which lasted from 2.588 to 1.806 million years ago, and is now included in the Pleistocene.

As with other older geologic periods, the geological strata that define the start and end are well identified but the exact dates of the start and end of the epoch are slightly uncertain. The boundaries defining the onset of the Pliocene are not set at an easily identified worldwide event but rather at regional boundaries between the warmer Miocene and the relatively cooler Pleistocene. The upper boundary was set at the start of the Pleistocene glaciations.

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Geological time

  1. Origin of the Earth 4.6 billion years ago
  2. Archean era
  3. Cryogenian period
  4. Ediacaran period
  5. Cambrian period
  6. Ordovician period
  7. Silurian period
  8. Devonian period
  9. Carboniferous period
  10. Permian period
  11. Triassic period
  12. Jurassic period
  13. Cretaceous period
  14. Palaeocene epoch
  15. Eocene epoch
  16. Oligocene epoch
  17. Miocene epoch
  18. Pliocene epoch
  19. Pleistocene epoch
  20. Holocene epoch
  21. Present day

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