Pliocene Sentence Examples

The Pliocene flora found refuges in favored localities from which at its close the lowlands were restocked while the arctic plants were left behind on the mountains.

Pliocene remains are less numerous than those of the Miocene.

The Pliocene appears only in the coast region of the Black and Azov Seas, but it is widely developed in the Aral-Caspian region, where, however, the Ust-Urt and the Obshchiy Syrt rose above the sea.

The Pliocene deposits are not very widely spread and are generally of fresh-water origin excepting near the coast, but marine Pliocene beds have been found at el Forklus in the Palmyra desert.

In most cases the eruptions appear to be of Pliocene or later date, but in the extreme north some of the basalt seems to belong to the Miocene period.

Apparently the musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) has little or no near relationship to either the oxen or the sheep; and it is not improbable that its affinities are with the Asiatic takin (Budorcas) and the extinct European Criotherium of the Pliocene of Samos.

In North America rhinoceroses became extinct before the close of the Pliocene period; but in the Old World, although their geographical distribution has become greatly restricted, at least five well-marked species survive.

Hornless rhinoceroses, with five fronttoes, ranging from the Oligocene to the Lower Pliocene in Europe, represent the genus Aceratherium, which may also occur in America, as it certainly does in India.

There is an axial zone of Cretaceous and Lower Eocene, and this is flanked on each side by the Upper Eocene and the Miocene, while the valley of the Irrawaddy is occupied chiefly by the Pliocene.

The Pliocene, on the other hand, is of freshwater origin, and contains silicified wood and numerous remains of Mammalia.

The geological formation of the soil belongs to the Quaternary and Pliocene period in its upper strata, and to the Eocene and Cretaceous in the lower.

Jukes-Browne and Harrison ascribe the Scotland beds to the Eocene or Oligocene period, the Oceanic series to the Miocene, the Bissex Hill marls to the Pliocene, and the coral limestones partly to the Pliocene and partly to the Pleistocene.

The greater part of Tunisia is composed of sandstones, marls and loosely stratified deposits belonging to the Pliocene and Quaternary periods.

Members of the group have existed in both east and west hemispheres since the beginning of the Miocene period; but in America they all became extinct before the end of the Pliocene period, and in the Old World their distribution has become greatly restricted.

The outbursts began in the later part of the Eocene period, and continued into the Pliocene, outlasting the period of folding.

Although now exclusively African, the family (of which all the representatives may be included in the single genus Hippopotamus, with several subgeneric groups) is represented in the Pliocene of Europe and the Lower Pliocene of northern India.

On the other hand, in Merycopotamus, of the Lower Pliocene of India and Burma, the upper molars have lost the fifth intermediate cusp of Ancodon; and thus, although highly selenodont, might be easily modified, by a kind of retrograde development, into the trefoil-columned molars of Hippopotamus.

Finally, we have in the Pliocene of India the genus Tetraconodon, remarkable for the enormous size attained by the bluntly conical premolars; as the molars are purely bunodont, this genus seems to be a late and specialized survivor of a primitive type..

An antelope from the Lower Pliocene of Northern India known as Bubalis, or Damaliscus, palaeindicus indicates the occurrence of the hartebeest group in that country.

Gazelles are common in the Miocene and Pliocene of both Europe and Asia.

Elands and kudus appear to have been represented in India during the Pliocene; the European Palaeoreas of the same age seems to be intermediate between the two, while Protragelaphus is evidently another European representative of the group. Helicophora is another spiral-horned European Pliocene antelope, but of somewhat doubtful affinity; the same being the case with the large Criotherium of the Samos Pliocene, in which the short horns are curiously twisted.

At the base of the Red Crag in East Anglia, and occasionally at the base of the other Pliocene Crags, there is a " nodule bed," consisting of phosphatic nodules, with rolled teeth and bones, which were formerly worked as " coprolites " for the preparation of artificial manure.

Suess therefore suggested that the northern continuation of the Alps had foundered, and its summits been buried beneath the Pliocene marine rocks of the Wanganui basin and the volcanic rocks of the Taupo area.

The Cainozoic system is represented by Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene and Pleistocene beds.

Marine beds of the Pliocene are best developed in the Wanganui basin.

The strata in which it was found belong to the Miocene or Upper Pliocene.

Fossil remains of extinct bears first occur in strata of the Pliocene age.

Faulting, probably in Pliocene times, lowered the basaltic plateaus to form the basin of Lough Neagh, leaving the eastern scarp at heights ranging up to 1800 ft.

Pliocene beds also occur.

To the Pliocene period the marine deposits of the Sahel of Algiers and of the Sahel Jijelli must be attributed; also the lacustrine marls and limestone of the basin of Constantine, and the ancient alluviums of the basins and depressions which bear no relation to the existing valleys.

Among the Tertiary volcanic rocks those of acid types (granites, granulites) were the first to appear and are developed latitudinally; rocks of intermediate type (dacites, andesites) characterize the Miocene and early Pliocene periods; while the basic rocks (ophites, elaeolite syenites and basalts) attained their maximum in later Pliocene and Quaternary times.

To these divisions Lyell gave in 1833, the names Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene.

De Blainville added to the knowledge of the shells of the Paris basin; Giovanni Battista Brocchi (1772-1826) in 1814, and Luigi Bellardi (1818-1889) and Giovanni Michelotti (born 1812) in 1840, described the Pliocene molluscs of the subApennine formation of Italy; from Germany and Austria appeared the epoch-making works of Heinrich Ernst Beyrich (1815-1896) and of Moritz Hoernes (1815-1868).

Paul similarly demonstrated genetic series of Paludina (Vivipara) in the Pliocene lakes of Slavonia (1875).

Among land animals striking illustrations of this local polyphyletic law are found in the existence of seven or eight contemporary series of rhinoceroses, five or six contemporary series of horses, and an equally numerous contemporary series of American Miocene and Pliocene camels; in short, the polyphyletic condition is the rule rather than the exception.

It is displayed to-day among the antelopes and to a limited degree among the zebras and rhinoceroses of Africa, a continent which exhibits a survival of the Miocene and Pliocene conditions of the northern hemisphere.

In the Miocene period andesites of various kinds were erupted, while at the close of the Pliocene began the great eruptions of basalt which reached their maximum in Quaternary times and continue to the present day.'

The short-horned Asiatic goats of the genus Hemitragus receive mention in the article Tahr; but it may be added that fossil species of the same genus are known from the Lower Pliocene formations of India, which have also yielded remains of a goat allied to the markhor of the Himalayas.

The Pliocene system stands in much the same stratigraphic relation to the Miocene as the Miocene does to the Eocene.

The marine Pliocene of the continent has its greatest development in California (the Merced series, peninsula of San Francisco), where it is assigned a maximum thickness of nearly 6000 ft., and possibly as much as 13,000 ft.

Marine Pliocene beds are reported to have an altitude of as much as 5000 ft.

The position of these beds is significant of the amount of change which has taken place in the west since the Pliocene period.

The non-marine formations of the Pliocene are its most characteristic feature.

Deformative movements of the minor sort seem to have been in progress somewhat generally during the Tertiary periods, especially in the western part of the country, but those at the close of the Pliocene seem to have exceeded greatly those of the earlier stages.

In this line there is a tendency 'to lose the last upper molar, but in Prolagus, which ranges in the Pliocene from Sardinia and Corsica to Spain, and forms a side-branch, the corresponding lower tooth has likewise disappeared.

This animal, whose remains occur in the Lower Pliocene of both Attica and Samos, was about the size of a donkey, and possessed three pairs of upper incisor teeth, of which the innermost were large and trihedral, recalling those of the existing genus.

Of the extinct North American peccaries, the typical Dicotyles occur in the Pliocene while the Miocene Bothriolabis, which has tusks of the peccary type, approximates in the structure of its cheek-teeth to the European Miocene genus among the Suinae.

An entire skull, obtained from the Lower Pliocene beds of Eppelsheim, Hesse-Darmstadt, in 1836, measured 41ft.

The Pliocene occurs chiefly in the low-lying land and is generally covered by drift and alluvium.

Except in Limburg, where, in the neighbourhood of Maastricht, the upper layers of the chalk are exposed and followed by Oligocene and Miocene beds, the whole of Holland is covered by recent deposits of considerable thickness, beneath which deep borings have revealed the existence of Pliocene beds similar to the " Crags " of East Anglia.

In the south of Holland the total thickness of the Pliocene series is only about 200 ft., and they are covered by about 100 ft.

At Amsterdam the top of the Pliocene lay 625 ft.

Eastward and westward of Amsterdam, as well as southward, the Pliocene beds rise slowly to the surface, and gradually decrease in thickness.

The appearance of northern shells in the upper divisions of the Pliocene series indicates the approach of the Glacial period, and glacial drift containing Scandinavian boulders now covers much of the country east of the Zuider Zee.

The hills on the right bank Geology, of the Tiber culminating in Monte Mario (455 ft.) belong to the first of these, being of the Pliocene formation; they consist of a lower bluish-grey clay and an upper group of yellow sands and gravels.

In the second period volcanic activity occurred at the bottom of the Pliocene sea, and the tufa, which extends over the whole Campagna to a thickness of 300 ft.

At Trezza, on the eastern base of the mountain, basaltic rocks occur associated with fossiliferous Pliocene clays.

Lyell concluded that, although no approximation can be given of the age of Etna, "its foundations were laid in the sea in the newer Pliocene period."

The Oligocene forms a band stretching from Antwerp to Maastricht, and this is followed towards the north by a discontinuous strip of Miocene and a fairly extensive area of Pliocene.

As regards its general characters, the skull of the okapi appears to be intermediate between that of the giraffe on the one hand and that of the extinct Palaeotragus (or Samotherium) of the Lower Pliocene deposits of southern Europe on the other.

Grecian Pliocene may occupy a somewhat similar position in regard to the horned Sivatherium of the Indian Siwaliks.

This communication began to fail, or close up presumably in the Miocene period; and before the dawn of Pliocene times the Sarmatian Ocean was broken up or divided into sections, one of which was the Aralo-Caspian sea already discussed.

Miocene and Pliocene deposits cover nearly the whole of the country south of a line drawn from Etna to Marsala; and there is also a considerable Miocene area in the north about Mistretta.

Marine Pliocene strata occur to the south of the pyramids of Giza and in the Fayum province, where, in addition, some gravel terraces, at a height of 500 ft.

Such beds of salt are found in strata of very varied geological age; the Salt Range of the Punjab, for instance, is probably of Cambrian age, while the famous saltdeposits of Wieliczka, near Cracow, have been referred to the Pliocene period.

The Sarmatian beds are also involved in the folds, indicating that the folding was not completed till Pliocene times.

Fossil voles from the Pliocene of England and Italy with molars which are rooted as soon as developed form the genus Mimomys.

In the Giraffidae, which include not only giraffes (Giraffa) but also the okapi (Ocapia) and a number of extinct species from the Lower Pliocene Tertiary deposits of southern Europe, Asia and North Africa, the appendages on the skull are of type No.

Helladotherium was a much larger animal, known by a single hornless skull from the Pliocene of Greece, which may be that of a female.

Largest of all is Sivatherium, typically from the Lower Pliocene of Northern India, but also recorded from Adrianople, in which the skull of the male is short and wide, with a pair of simple conical horns above the eye, and a huge branching pair at the vertex.

It is noteworthy, however, that certain Pliocene European deer (Anoglochis) appear to be closely allied to the modern American deer (Mazama).

The Pliocene deposits contain a mollusc fauna more arctic than that which exists at the present time, indicating probably that the connexion between the Pacific and Arctic Oceans was broader than it is now.

Fossil remains of flamingos have been described from the Lower Miocene of France as P. croizeti, and from the Pliocene of Oregon.

Although it has the deciduous dentition, Mme Pavlow considers herself justified in referring the Kherson skull to the genus Procamelus previously known only from the Lower Pliocene or Upper Miocene strata of North America, and differing from modern camels, among other features, by the retention of a fuller series of premolar teeth.

In caverns and superficial deposits of South America occur remains of extinct species more or less closely related to modern llamas; but previous to the Upper Pliocene the group is unknown in South America, which it reached from the north.

Miocene beds are found in Corfu and Zante, and Pliocene deposits cover much of the low-lying ground.

It is formed of raised beaches and sea-beds, ranging from the Pliocene period downwards, and resting on Upper Eocene sandstone.

Griesbach considers that the general outline of the land configuration has remained much the same since Pliocene times, and that the force which brought about the wrinkling of the older deposits still continues to add fold on fold.

The Pliocene consists entirely of freshwater and terrestrial deposits, which were probably laid down at the foot of the rising hills and on the floors of the intervening valleys.

In the former even the Pliocene beds are crumpled and folded, overfolded and overthrust in the most violent fashion; in the latter none but the oldest beds, certainly none so late as the Permian, have been crumpled or crushed - occasionally they are bent and frequently they are faulted, but the faults, though sometimes of considerable magnitude, are simple dislocations, unaccompanied by any serious disturbance of the strata.

The Red Sea is formed by a line of fracture, probably dating from Pliocene times, crossing the centre of a dome of Archean rocks, on both flanks of which, in Egypt and Arabia., rest Secondary and Tertiary deposits.

This was the opinion of Sir Frederick McCoy, by whom the deposits in question were regarded as probably of Pliocene age.

Pliocene and later beds cover the central plain and occur at intervals along the coast.

The Pliocene is of marine origin, and rests unconformably upon all the older beds, including the Post-oligocene igneous rocks, thus proving that the final folding and the last volcanic outbursts were approximately of Miocene age.

The Tertiary beds include both marine and terrestrial deposits, and appear to be chiefly of Miocene and Pliocene age.

The next succeeding deposit is a sandstone, often highly inclined, which rests unconformably upon the Nummulitic beds and resembles the Lower Siwaliks of the SubHimalaya (Pliocene) but which as yet has yielded no fossils of any kind.

It was, therefore, during the Miocene period that the elevation of this part of the chain began, while the disturbance of the Siwalik-like sandstone indicates that the folding continued into the Pliocene period.

The Siwalik fossils contain 84 species of mammals of 45 genera, the whole bearing a marked resemblance to the Miocene fauna of Europe, but containing a larger number of genera still existing, especially of ruminants, and now held to be of Pliocene age.

Marine Pliocene beds occur at the mouth of the Tagus.

On the right bank they are of pliocene gravel, on the left of tufa; and on the latter, on a cliff above the river (the ancient Puilia saxa) stood Ficana (marked by the farmhouse of Dragoncello), which is said to have owed its origin to Ancus Martius.

But in the eastern and southern counties the Chalk is covered by younger deposits of Tertiary age; the Pliocene Crags of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Lower London Tertiaries (London Clay, Woolwich and Reading Beds, &c.) of the London Basin comprising parts of Essex, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Bucks and Berks, and northern Kent.

Fossil hyenas occur in the Lower Pliocene of Greece, China, India, &c.; while remains indistinguishable from those of the striped species have been found in the Upper Pliocene of England and Italy.

All the above are of Pleistocene and perhaps Pliocene age, but in the Santa Cruz beds of Patagonia there occur the two curious genera Propalaeohoplophorus and Peltephilus, the former of which is a primitive and generalized type of glyptodont, while the latter seems to come nearer to the armadillos.

The group is typified by Chalicotherium, of which the original species was discovered in the Lower Pliocene strata of Eppelsheim, Hesse-Darmstadt, in 1825, and named on the evidence of the teeth, the limbs being subsequently described as Macrotherium.

Remains referred to Chalicotherium have been also obtained from the Lower Pliocene and Upper Miocene strata of Greece, Hungary, India, China and North America.

Limbbones nearly resembling those of Macrotherium, but relatively stouter, have been described from the Pliocene beds of Attica and Samos as Ancylotherium.

Possibly, however, its birthplace may prove to be Africa; if so, we shall have a case analogous to that of the African elephant, namely that while giraffes flourished during the Pliocene in Asia (where they may have originated), they survive only in Africa.

Hippopotamuses, on the contrary, are now exclusively African, although they were represented in tropical Asia during the Pliocene and over the greater part of Europe at a later epoch.

The folding and consequent elevation went on until the close of the Miocene period when a considerable subsidence took place and the Pliocene sea overspread the lower portions of the range.

Subsequent elevation, without folding, has raised these Pliocene deposits to a considerable height - in some cases over 3000 ft.

There have been no active volcanoes since the Pliocene Tertiary time, but the country is still subject to dangerous earthquakes.

Large oxen also occur in the Lower Pliocene of India, although not closely allied to the living kinds; while in the same formation are found remains of bison (or [?] yak) and buffaloes, some of the latter being nearly akin to the anoa, although much larger.

Perhaps, however, the most interesting are the remains of certain oxen from the Lower Pliocene of Europe and India, which have been described under the sub-generic (or generic) title of Leptobos, and are characterized by the absence of horns in the females.

Near Husavik in the north there have been found marine deposits containing a number of marine shells; they belong to the Red Crag division of the Pliocene.

Both these deposits may be Pliocene.

Beyond this, in Russia and Galicia, lies an extensive plateau, much of which is covered by flat-lying Miocene and Pliocene beds; but in the deep valleys of the Dniester and its tributaries the ancient rocks which form the foundation of the plateau are laid bare.

Most of the eruptions took place during the Miocene and Pliocene periods.

Marine Miocene deposits occupy some small tracts, especially on the coast of Valencia, But most of the sandy Tertiary rocks of that district are Pliocene.

The Tertiary strata of Andalusia are specially noteworthy for containing the native silver of Herrerias, which is found in a Pliocene bed in the form of flukes, needles and crystals.

The superficial Miocene and Pliocene deposits in the west, above referred to, are underlaid by the White river groups of the Oligocene, whose outcrops of Brule clay and Chadron formation also have been mentioned.

It was once generally supposed that the Pliocene epoch in Nebraska was distinguished by the activity of geysers; but the so-called geyserite " now known commonly and correctly as " natural pumice " and " volcanic ash," which is found in the Oligocene and later formations, has no connexion whatever with geysers, but is produced by the shattering of volcanic rock.

It is most intimately connected with Victoria, from which it was only separated by the foundering of Bass's Strait in late Pliocene or early Pleistocene times.

The Tertiary formations have been assigned to six periods; these are termed - Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and each has its own botanical peculiarities.

For this study it will be most convenient to take next south and central France, for in that area can be found a series of plant-bearing strata in which is preserved a nearly continuous history of the vegetation from Upper Eocene down to Pliocene.

A steady decrease of temperature marked the Pliocene period throughout Europe, and gradually brought the climatic con Pliocene.

At last, in the latest Pliocene strata (often called " pre-Glacial ") we find a flora consisting almost entirely of existing species belonging to the Palaearctic regions, and nearly all still living in the country where the fossils are found.

The plants of the Older Pliocene period are unknown in Great Britain, and little known throughout Europe except in central France and the Mediterranean region.

To this epoch, or perhaps to a stage slightly later, and not to the Newer Pliocene period, as is generally supposed, should probably be referred the lignite deposits of the Val d'Arno.

This lignite and the accompanying leaf-bearing clays underlie and are apparently older than the strata with Newer Pliocene mammals and mollusca.

The only mammal actually associated with the plants appears to be a species of tapir, a genus which in Europe seems to be characteristically Miocene and Older Pliocene.

The plants of the Val d'Arno have been described by Ristori; they consist mainly of deciduous trees, a large proportion of which are known Miocene and early Pliocene forms, nearly all of them being extinct.

Somewhat later Pliocene deposits in the Val d'Arno, as well as the tuffs associated with the Pliocene volcanoes in central France, yield plants of a more familiar type, a considerable proportion of them still living in the Mediterranean region, though some are only now found at distant localities, and others are extinct.

A somewhat later Pliocene flora is represented by the plants found at Tegelen, near Venloo, on the borders of the Netherlands and Germany.

An extinct water-lily, Euryale limburgensis, belongs to a monotypic genus now confined to Assam and China; an extinct sedge, Dulichium vespiforme, belongs to a genus only living in America, though the only living species once flourished also in Denmark; an extinct species of water-aloe (Stratiotes elegans) makes a third genus, represented only by a single living species, which was evidently better represented in Pliocene times.

The latest Pliocene, or pre-Glacial, flora of northern Europe is best known from the Cromer Forest-bed of Norfolk and Suffolk, a fluvio-marine deposit which lies beneath the whole of the Glacial deposits of these counties, and passes downwards into the Crag, many of the animals actually associated with the plants being characteristic Pliocene species which seem immediately afterwards to have been exterminated by the increasing cold.

Apart from a few unsatisfactory remains from the Eocene of Wyoming, fossil tailless batrachians are otherwise only known from the Oligocene, Miocene and Pliocene of Europe and India.

It is held that in the Miocene and Pliocene periods there were land connexions with the Philippines, Java and the Moluccas, and through the last with Australasian lands to the east and south-east.

Species from the Pliocene of Texas and the Upper Miocene (Loup Fork) of Oregon were at one time assigned to Hippidium, but this is incorrect, that genus being exclusively South American.

Possibly the Arctic musk-ox (Ovibos) may be connected with the takin by means of certain extinct ruminants, such as the North American Pleistocene Euceratherium and the European Pliocene Criotherium (see Chamois, Goral, Serow, Rocky Mountain Goat and Takin).

The Bagshot Beds in the west form infertile tracts of sandy soil, covered with heath and pine, where space is available for the great camps and military training-grounds round Aldershot, and for the extensive cemeteries at Woking The London Clay in the east is more fertile and crowded with villages, while the East Anglian portion of the basin consists of the more recent Pliocene sands and gravels, which mix with the boulder clay to form the best wheat-growing soil in the country.

The large area which is enclosed within the curve of the Carpathians is for the most part covered by loess, alluvium and other modern deposits, but Miocene and Pliocene beds appear around its borders.

The eastern part of the state is covered with a thick mantle of Quaternary (Pleistocene), and the greatest part of the western portion with very thick deposits of Miocene and Pliocene (Tertiary) To the Pleistocene belong the alluvium, loess and glacial drift, and in part the sand-hills.

The Miocene and Pliocene are absent.

Mtich of Italy contains Pliocene clay, which is good for pottery and brickmaking.

A gradual refrigeration proceeded through the Pliocene period.

At the close of the Pliocene the European flora was apparently little different from that now existing, though some warmer types such as the waterchestnut (Trapa natans) had a more northern extension.