Tertiary is an officially deprecated but still widely used term for a geologic period from 65 million to 2.6 million years ago, a time span that lies between the superseded Secondary period and the Quaternary. The Tertiary is no longer recognized as a formal unit by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, its traditional span being divided between the Paleogene and Neogene Periods of the Cenozoic Era.
The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start of the Cenozoic Era, spanning to the beginning of the most recent ice age at the end of the Pliocene Epoch. The Tertiary also included the early Pleistocene.
Read more about Tertiary: Historical Use of The Term, Geological Events, Climate
Famous quotes containing the word tertiary:
“Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)