Quaternary Extinction

Ice_age_fauna_of_northern_Spain_-_Mauricio_Antón

The Quaternary period (from 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present) has seen the

extinction Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds ( taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed ...

s of numerous predominantly megafaunal species, which have resulted in a collapse in faunal density and diversity and the extinction of key ecological strata across the globe. The most prominent event in the

Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of the Pleistocene Epoch within ...

is differentiated from previous Quaternary pulse extinctions by the widespread absence of

ecological succession Ecological succession is the process of change in the species structure of an ecological community over time. The time scale can be decades (for example, after a wildfire) or more or less. Bacteria allows for the cycling of nutrients such as car ...

to replace these extinct species, and the regime shift of previously established faunal relationships and habitats as a consequence. The earliest casualties were incurred at 130,000 BCE (the

start Start can refer to multiple topics: *Takeoff, the phase of flight where an aircraft transitions from moving along the ground to flying through the air * Starting lineup in sports * Standing start, and rolling start, in an auto race Acronyms * ...

of the Late Pleistocene), in Australia ~ 60,000 years ago, in Americas ~ 15,000 years ago, coinciding in time with the

early human migrations Early human migrations are the earliest migrations and expansions of archaic and modern humans across continents. They are believed to have begun approximately 2 million years ago with the early expansions out of Africa by ''Ho