In geologic time, the Pliocene Epoch occurs during the Tertiary Period (65 million years ago [mya] to 2.6 mya) of the Cenozoic Era of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Tertiary Period is sometimes divided into—or referred to in terms of—a...

The Pliocene epoch (spelled Pleiocene in some older texts) is the period in the geologic timescale that extends from 5.332 million to 1.806 million years before present. The Pliocene is the second epoch of the Neogene period in the Cenozoic era. The...

JIM I. MEAD [1] CHRISTOPHER J. BELL [2] Abstract.--Pliocene herpetofaunas are uncommon in the published literature. Here we report on a small Pliocene (Blancan Land Mammal Age) herpetofauna from the White Narrows local fauna (Clark Co., Nevada) dating approximately 4.9 to...

The appearance of Oldowan sites c. 2.5 million years ago signals one of the most important adaptive shifts in human evolution. Large mammal butchery, stone artefact manufacture and novel transport and discard behaviours led to the accumulation of the first recognized archaeological debris....

Italian researchers have excavated the skeleton of a 4 million-year-old whale in the Tuscan countryside, a discovery that could help reconstruct the prehistoric environment of the sea that once covered the region, officials said Tuesday.The 33-foot skeleton, dating to the Pliocene epoch, was found in...