QUATERNARY

This article appears in Volume V22, Page 718 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: PYR-RAY

QUATERNARY , in

geology

GEOLOGY (from Gr. yp7, the earth, and Abyor, science)

, the time - division which embraces the Pleistocence and Holocene epochs, i.e. the later portion of the Cainozoic era, equivalent to the " Post-

Pliocene

PLIOCENE (from the Gr. sr?eiov, mere, and xatvbs, recent)

" or " Post-Tertiary " of certain writers. The

term

TERM

was proposed by J. Desnoyers in 1829 to cover those formations which were formed just anterior to the present. There are other ways of regarding the Quaternary time. Sir A.

Geikie

(Text Book of

Geology

GEOLOGY (from Gr. yp7, the earth, and Abyor, science)

, 4th ed., 1903) divides it into an upper, post-glacial or Human period, and a lower,

Pleistocene

PLEISTOCENE

or Glacial period; but he subdivides the former into an Historic and a Prehistoric epoch, a

scheme

SCHEME (Lat. schema, Gr. oxfjya, figure, form, from the root axe, seen in exeiv, to have, hold, to be of such shape, form, &c.)

presenting difficulties, for the

Palaeolithic

PALAEOLITHIC (Gr. iraXates, old, and )tWBor, stone)

or lower stage of prehistoric time cannot really be separated from the

Pleistocene

PLEISTOCENE

(q.v.). E. Kayser (Formationskunde, 3rd. ed., 1906), who is in agreement with the definition accepted above, employs a nomenclature which is rarely adopted by British geologists; he divides the Quartarformation (Quartar) into a younger,

modern

MODERN

epoch, the

Alluvium

ALLUVIUM

, and an older epoch, the Pleistocene or Diluvium (= Glacial). A. de Lapparent, on the other hand (Traite de geologie, 5th ed., 1906), treats the Era moderne or Quaternaire as a

great

GREAT

time division equivalent in value to the Tertiary, Secondary, &c., which is so far represented only by a first epoch, the Pleistocene.

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