Web Links

Chapter 19, The Neogene World

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The Cenozoic Era. From the University of California at Berkeley Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) exhibit. Links to articles on Cenozoic stratigraphy, ancient life, and fossil localities.

The Miocene Epoch. UCMP exhibit. Links to articles on Miocene stratigraphy, life, and fossil localities.

The Pliocene Epoch. UCMP exhibit.

The Pleistocene. UCMP exhibit. Many links to other Pleistocene sites.

A Quick Background to the Pliocene. Actually a fairly comprehensive discussion of Pliocene climate, plants, and animals.

The Climate of the Pliocene: Simulating Earth’s Last Great Warm Period. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Research on climate in the Pliocene. Includes climate simulations of the middle Pliocene and an article on the causes of the Pliocene warming.

Cold Climates, Warm Climates: How Can We Tell Past Temperatures? GISS article.

Remembrance of Things Past: Greenhouse Lessons from the Geologic Record. Sections on sources of climate history and a capsule history of climate change from the last million years through the last thousand years.

Ice Ages and Glaciation. A comprehensive site covering the mechanics of glaciers, glacial landforms, and the causes of ice ages. Links to related sites.

What Causes Ice Ages? A concise article on the cause of glacial cycles during the Ice Age.

Ice Ages. Illinois State Museum exhibit on Ice Ages: what they are, when they have occurred, and why they occur.

New Evidence: Earth’s Natural Cooling Cycle. New evidence from deep-sea cores shows that the Earth’s climate cools significantly and abruptly in a naturally occurring 1000- to 3000-year cycle.

Changes in the Earth’s Climate for the Past Two Million Years.

What If the Conveyor Were to Shut Down? GSA Today article.

Milankovitch Theory and Global Change.

Did an Asteroid Impact Trigger the Ice Ages? Interesting article on the possibility that an asteroid impact cause the modern Ice Age.

Life through Geologic Time: Miocene. Text about fossil-bearing sites and significant evolutionary and paleogeographic events during the Miocene Epoch. Photos of Miocene life.

Life through Geologic Time: Pliocene. Text about fossil-bearing sites and significant evolutionary and paleogeographic events during the Pliocene Epoch.

Life through Geologic Time: Pleistocene. Text about fossil-bearing sites and significant evolutionary and paleogeographic events during the Pleistocene Epoch. Photos of Pleistocene life.

The Mammoth Saga. Virtual exhibition of mammoths and other animals, and plants of the ice ages. Includes articles and photographs of floras, faunas, ecosystems, mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer, and saber-toothed cats.

Pleistocene Mammals at the Russian Paleontological Institute. UCMP special exhibit.

Fossils of Rancho La Brea. Online exhibition of the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits.

The La Brea Tar Pits. UCMP exhibit.

Midwestern U.S. 16,000 Years Ago. Illinois State Museum exhibit. Very comprehensive. Articles and photos on late Pleistocene Midwest environments, landscapes, plants, animals, and extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene.

An Atlas of the Ice Age Earth. Text and excellent maps by region of the world of global land environments during the last 130,000 years.

Earth History page of the Paleomap Project. Clickable links to paleographic maps of geologic time intervals, including the Miocene Epoch.

This site presents a series of plate-tectonic reconstructions to show the broad patterns of Phanerozoic Earth history.

Paleogeographic globes show global and North America and Europe reconstructions. For this chapter, see the globe for the Miocene Epoch.

Three-part sedimentation, tectonics, and paleogeography maps of the North Atlantic region (North America, Europe, and parts of Asia, South America, and Africa). For this chapter, see the maps for the Miocene Epoch. Explanation of symbols.

Global tectonic features maps display the major tectonic elements (plates, oceans, ridges, subduction zones, mountain belts). For this chapter, see the maps for the Early Miocene and Late Miocene. Explanation of symbols.
Global Earth History. Includes a chart showing the paleogeography and evolution of life from the Cambrian through the present.

Miocene History of the Western U.S. Facies/tectonics and paleogeographic maps. Explanation of symbols.

Pliocene History of the Western U.S. Facies/tectonics and paleogeographic maps. Explanation of symbols.

Tertiary Paleogeography of the Southwestern U.S. Includes Miocene globe; early and late Miocene paleogeography; and early and late Miocene tectonic elements.

The Long Foreground: Human Prehistory. Richard Law, Washington State University. A great site on human evolution, covering all aspects of our hominid ancestors. Includes specific information about each of the hominid ancestors and places them in geological time.

The Origins of Humankind site is a comprehensive Internet resource for the human evolution community. Human origins news, research, links, and more.

Fossil Hominids. From the Talk Origins Archive. Be sure to check out the articles on hominid species, hominid fossils, and recent developments.

How Humans Evolved. Includes a well-illustrated summary of our current understanding of human evolution.

History of Man: Human Evolution. A wonderful introduction to human evolution beginning with primate taxonomy and progressing to the fossil record for the primates and man. Includes a series of 10 lectures in PDF format (Adobe Acrobat).

Human Prehistory: An Exhibition.

Human Evolution: The Fossil Evidence in 3D. Three-dimensional pictures of skulls from modern primates and fossil hominid ancestors. The pictures can be rotated 360 degrees. Be patient, the images take some time to load. You will need the Shockwave plug-in, but you can download it from the site.

Fossil Skulls. American Museum of Natural History site. Three-dimensional, rotatable views of hominid skulls. Requires the Shockwave plug-in.

Virtual Anthropology. An interesting site that describes how computer modeling is used to reconstruct fossil skulls.

The African Emergence and Early Asian Dispersals of the Genus Homo. A great series of pages on the genus Homo during the early years of the evolution of the genus. Very well illustrated.

Fossil Evidence for Human Evolution in China. Includes a table of Chinese fossil hominids, a picture gallery of fossil hominoids and hominids from China, an atlas of human evolution in China, and a timeline of human evolution in China.

Transitional Vertebrate Fossils. See the Primates section of Part 2, Transitions among Mammals, for a detailed review of human ancestry.

New Fossils Found. Article about the jaw of an early Homo (dated to 2.3 million old) found in Ethiopia in 1996 and answers to questions about Lucy, the famous fossil skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis found in 1973, also in Ethiopia.

The Lucy Test. Australopicthecus afarensis is an extinct primate sometimes cited as a direct ancestor of humans. The famous fossil for this species is "Lucy." The most interesting feature of the site is a test you can take comparing various parts of the "Lucy" fossils with primate and human equivalents (you are not told which is which). The results are scored to see if you think it is a hominid, a primate, or some intermediate stage. Fun.

A Hominid from the Lower Pleistocene. An 800,000-year-old species (Homo antecessor) takes its place on the human family tree and may be ancestral to both modern humans and Neanderthals.

W. H. Freeman & Co. and Sumanas, Inc.