The Quaternary Glaciations

Abstract

The Quaternary era, in which we are now living, started about 12 million years ago. There is little real justification for separating it from the Tertiary era, since its only really distinctive feature is the occurrence of the great Pleistocene glaciations; and the equally severe glaciations of earlier times, such as are known to have occurred in the late Pre-Cambrian and the Carboniferous-Permian, are not regarded as justifying the erection of separate eras. Likewise the usual convenient division of the Quaternary into the Pleistocene Period, during which the glaciations occurred, and the Holocene or post-Glacial Period is artificial since there is no proof that the so-called post-glacial period of the present day is not merely an inter-glacial and that the ice will not advance again.