The Sicilian European Stage is a

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

faunal stage In chronostratigraphy, a stage is a succession of rock strata laid down in a single age on the geologic timescale, which usually represents millions of years of deposition. A given stage of rock and the corresponding age of time will by convent ...

in the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

of the

Geologic time scale The geologic time scale, or geological time scale, (GTS) is a representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. It is a system of chronological dating that uses chronostratigraphy (the process of relating strata to time) and geochr ...

. While earlier defined as between 0.781 ± 0.005 Ma and 0.26 Ma (million years ago), in the middle of the Pleistocene

epoch In chronology and periodization, an epoch or reference epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era. The "epoch" serves as a reference point from which time is measured. The moment of epoch is usually decided by ...

, more accurate data places it at the end of the early Pleistocene, ending at 0.781 ± 0.005 Ma, and makes it a sub-stage. The Sicilian Stage was originally proposed by Doderlein, in 1872, and thought to occur after the end of the Calabrian. The Milazzian faunal stage is sometimes considered to be the last part of the Sicilian, and sometimes to be after it. In 1991, Rio ''et al.'' proposed placing the Sicilian as a sub-stage below (before) the Brunhes–Matuyama magnetic reversal, as part of a newly defined Selinuntian Stage which would be divided into the Santernian, Emilian, and Sicilian sub-stages, completely replacing the Calabrian. Although the problems with the Calabrian pointed out by Rio were acknowledged, the name "Calabrian" was not rejected; however, the Sicilian was recognized by some as the third sub-stage of the Calabrian., and continues to be used.

Representative Fauna

*''Tursiops osennae'' (Simonelli, 1911), a porpoise Kellogg, Remington (March 1928) "The History of Whales – Their Adaptation to Life in the Water" ''The Quarterly Review of Biology'' 3(1): pp. 29–76, page 60

Notes

References

* * Gignoux, M. (1910) "Sur la Classification du Pliocene et du Quarternaire de I'talie du Sud" ''Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences'' 150: pp. 841–844
Middle Pleistocene Pleistocene life Quaternary animals of Europe Regional geologic time scales Biochronology {{geochronology-stub