The Quaternary with an Emphasis on the last 500,000 years: Glacial-Interglacial Climate Cyclic Variability, Coral Barrier Reef/Atoll Establishment and Growth, Human and Homo Sapiens Evolution and Spread.

Instructor: Prof. Droxler

About the workshop:.  The Quaternary is divided into Epochs: the Pleistocene and the Holocene. The consensus on when the Quaternary started is rather recent! In 2009, the international Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) officially moved the boundary backward, from 1.8 million years ago (Ma) to 2.58 Ma, to align its initiation with the onset of global cooling which triggered the formation of permanent ice sheets in the Earth Northern Hemisphere. The Holocene Epoch officially began at about 11,700 years ago, marking the end of the last major glacial interval and the beginning of the current warm interglacial, when Homo sapiens initially developed a more sedentary life style and, at the same time, agriculture.

The absence of a continent centered on the North Pole made these ice sheets, established in relatively low latitude at around 65 degree North in average, rather unstable with cold glacial growth succeeding to warm interglacial melting intervals. Trough the Quaternary, a systematic climate cooling is observed, with well-established climate cycles evolving from high frequency/low amplitude glacial/interglacial cycles in the first 2 million years to low frequency/high amplitude cycles in the last 500,000 years. Last 500,000 years high amplitude short-lived sea level transgressions, following long intervals of continental shelf and carbonate platform exposure, triggered the rise of coral barrier reefs and atolls. Surviving the multiple cyclic glacial intervals, humans evolve through the Quaternary and Homo sapiens, initially observed about 300,000 years as its own species, well adapted themselves to harsh climate cyclic variations and in particular dominated and thrived on Earth during the Holocene warm interglacial Epoch.