United States or Sierra Leone ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Although the fossil fauna characterising these upraised sands and clays consists exclusively of existing northern species of testacea, it is more than probable that they may not all belong to that division of the Pleistocene strata which we are now considering. On the contrary, they decidedly represent a more arctic fauna.
For the Early Pleistocene, apart from the Java fossil, Pithecanthropus erectus, a veritable 'missing link', whom we may here disregard as falling altogether outside our world of Europe, there are only two individuals that can with certainty be referred to this distant period. These are the Piltdown and the Heidelberg specimens.
THE WESTERN UNITED STATES IN GLACIAL TIMES. The western United States was not covered during the Pleistocene by any general ice sheet, but all the high ranges were capped with permanent snow and nourished valley glaciers, often many times the size of the existing glaciers of the Alps.
The Elephas antiquus and its associated Rhinoceros leptorhinus may have preceded the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros in the valley of the Thames, or both may have alternately prevailed in the same area in the Pleistocene period.
Professor Huxley's observation regarding the wide range of variation, both as to shape and capacity, in the skulls of so pure a race as the native Australian, removes to no small extent this supposed anomaly, assuming what though not proved is very probable, that both varieties co-existed in the Pleistocene period in Western Europe.
In geology, for example, one boy may be fascinated by the fossil hunting, another will find his interest in the effects of structure in scenery, and a third, with more imagination, will give his whole mind to the reconstruction of the past, and will pore over maps of Pleistocene Europe and pictures of Silurian landscape with the keenest appreciation.
Hence, it follows, that all these ravines must have existed before the time at which the valley was occupied by the great mere. This fact acquires a peculiar importance when we proceed to consider the grounds for the conclusion that the old Palestinian mere attained its highest level in the cold period of the pleistocene epoch.
It is natural, therefore, to encounter a gap in the regular sequence of geological monuments bearing on the past history of Man, wherever we have proofs of glacial action having prevailed with intensity, as it has done over large parts of Europe and North America, in the Pleistocene period.
There now appeared intelligence, reason, a moral nature, and a capacity for self-directed progress such as had never been before on earth. THE RECENT EPOCH. The Glacial epoch ends with the melting of the ice sheets of North America and Europe, and the replacement of the Pleistocene mammalian fauna by present species.
Preliminary Remarks on the Subjects treated of in this Work. Definition of the Terms Recent and Pleistocene. Tabular View of the entire Series of Fossiliferous Strata.
Word Of The Day