Читать книгу Oceans For Dummies - Joseph Kraynak - Страница 67

The Quaternary period (from 2.6 million years ago to now) is divided into the Pleistocene and the Holocene epochs, and this time, we’re going to honor that division. (Note that some people believe the Quaternary epoch should be part of the Neogene period, but we’re going to keep it separate.)

The Pleistocene epoch ushered in some of the most awesome megafauna (large animals), including mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, giant sloths (they would have been so cute and s-o-o-o s-l-o-w), Megalania (a lizard you wouldn’t want to cross paths with), elephant birds, dire wolves (yes, Game of Thrones!), cave bears, wooly rhinoceros, and aurochs (wild ox), but most went extinct during the transition to the Holocene epoch. And we also lost megalodons (so, no worries about bumping into an 82-foot-long shark).

Neanderthals evolved during the Pleistocene epoch, alongside more anatomically-modern human ancestors. The oldest living things today are two nematodes (wormy looking creatures) from the Pleistocene, who were frozen in ice 42,000 years ago, and were brought back to life, which is creepy and super cool at the same time. And human ancestors became Homo sapiens (let’s hear it for the humans!). During the Holocene, favorable environmental conditions allowed loads of species to grow and flourish around the globe. The Holocene also marks the beginning of agriculture.

And that pretty much wraps up 3.8 billion years of evolution, not that it has stopped or anything like that.