::''This is a Geological time scale article, for archaeology, see

Etruscan civilization The Etruscan civilization () was developed by a people of Etruria in ancient Italy with a common language and culture who formed a federation of city-states. After conquering adjacent lands, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, rou ...

'' The Tyrrhenian Stage is the last

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 ...

of 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 ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. It runs from 0.26 million (260,000) to 0.01143 million (11,430) years ago.GeoWhen Database: Tyrrhenian European Stage
/ref> It overlaps with the end of the

Middle Pleistocene The Chibanian, widely known by its previous designation of Middle Pleistocene, is an age in the international geologic timescale or a stage in chronostratigraphy, being a division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. Th ...

and all of the Late Pleistocene. The time period of the Tyrrhenian Stage is the same as that of the Senegalese fauna assemblage.Hearty, P.J. and Pra, G. Dai (2003) "Comment on: "The age of Late Pleistocene shorelines and tectonic activity of Taranto area, southern Italy" by G. Bellouomini, M. Caldara, C. Casini, M. Cerasoli, L. Manfra, G. Mastrronuzzi, G. Palmentola, P. Sanso, P. Tuccimei, and P.L. Vesica" ''Quaternary Science Reviews'' 22: pp. 2363-2367

Definition

The end of the Tyrrhenian is defined as exactly 10,000 Carbon-14 years before the present (0.01143 +/- 0.00013 mya), which is near to the end of the

Younger Dryas The Younger Dryas (c. 12,900 to 11,700 years BP) was a return to glacial conditions which temporarily reversed the gradual climatic warming after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, c. 27,000 to 20,000 years BP). The Younger Dryas was the last stag ...

cold spell.

History of the definition

The Tyrrhenian Stage was first defined in 1914 by Arturo Issel to describe the stratigraphic section containing ''

Strombus ''Strombus'' is a genus of medium to large sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the family Strombidae, which comprises the true conchs and their immediate relatives. The genus ''Strombus'' was named by Swedish Naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1 ...

'' fossils originally investigated by Gignoux. ''Strombus bubonius'' was the leading fossil.

References

{{Quaternary Footer Pleistocene life Middle Pleistocene Late Pleistocene Quaternary animals of Europe Prehistoric Italy