PiggieLover99+Quaternary

By: PiggieLover99

[|Quaternary Period] To see my reflection paragraph click here To see my visuals bibliography click here To see my Information bibliography click here

Even though the period we are living in now is the q uaternary, many things happened before and will happen after.The period before was the Tertiary period. The tertiary and the q uaternary are both in the Cenozoic Era. In the Tertiary period there were many giant mammals like sabertooth cats and mastodons. The climate was cold and that continued on into the Quaternary period. After the Quaternary it seems that global warming will keep destroying the environment. This December there was no snow. [|Global warming] may cause other extinctions especially in the poles. The heat will cause the poles to melt and leave animals with no home. Humans will keep polluting the earth. Many things happened before and will happen after but many other things happened during this time.

ABIOTIC Even though the Quaternary Period is still going on in the beginning the climate was different. Throughout this period there were several climate changes. There would be a time when it was cold and caused ice ages, and other times it we be warm and melt the ice. The water in the sea would freeze and cause the sea level to drop by more than 100 meters. Then the water melted and would rise again. In the later Quaternary Period, the continents are where they are today.But in the beginning of this period they were slightly different. The land was scattered around the Earth, therefore the land was at many different latitudes. But the majority of the land was and is in the northern hemisphere. The continents had split up and went floating on there plate tectonics, to where we see them on a map today. During this period, Massachusetts is around 41 degrees N orth, right about where it is now. In the earlier Quaternary Period the continents were mostly how they are today but the climate still changed constantly.

ROCKS AND LANDFORMS Glaciers had a big impact on our landforms. As the glaciers moved during the ice ages. They picked up sediment. When the glaciers dropped the

sediment it formed things like cape cod and long island .When it picked up sediment it formed the Great Lakes and finger lakes. One fossil that was found was the Glyptodont. The Glyptodont was a cousin to the armadillo, it was found in South America, Panama and southern North America. It is 10,000 or 15,000 years old. Another fossil that was found from the Quaternary Period was the Tapir. Tapir was found in Missouri, United States. But even today [|Tapir's] are still living although they are sendanered. These are just some of the landforms made and fossils found in the Quaternary Period.

BIOTIC

Although the abiotic is similar the biotic is very different from today.The climate in this period effected the biotic life. The plants in this period you can see right now, like conifers, ferns, and different flowers.There were a couple ice ages so the Quaternary had many mammals, including the wolly mammouth. Many mammals had fur so that they could survive during the cold times. Other animals that thrived were algae, coral, mollusks and fish. During this time humans were evolving, although the human ancestors started evolving a long time ago, humans are really developing. The ancestors in the Quaternary Period are, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens neandertalensis, and finally us,Homo sapiens sapiens. They have found evidence of homo neandertalensis in the [| Lascaux Caves in Franc].