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History of Quaternary Science 10 INTRODUCTION/History of Quaternary Science Clark, P. U., Alley, R. B., and Pollard, D. (1999). Northern van der Molen, J., and van Dijck, B. (2000). The evolution of the Hemisphere Ice-Sheet Influences on Global Climate Change. Dutch and Belgian coasts and the role of sand supply from the Science 286, 1104–1111. North Sea. Global and Planetary Change 27, 223–244. Curry, R., and Mauritzen, C. (2005). Dilution of the Northern North Velichko, A. A., Borlsova, O. K., Zelikson, E. M., Faure, H., Atlantic Ocean in recent decades. Science 308, 1772–1774. Adams, J. M., Branchu, P., and Faure-Denard, L. (1993). Dawson, A. G., Long, D., and Smith, D. E. (1988). The Storegga Greenhouse warming and the Eurasian biota: are there any slides: Evidence from Eastern Scotland for a possible Tsunami. lessons from the past? Global and Planetary Change 7, 51–67. Marine Geology 82, 271–276. Vinnikov, K. Y., and Grody, N. C. (2003). Global warming trend Dirzo, R., and Raven, P. H. (2003). Global state of biodiversity and of mean tropospheric temperature observed by satellites. loss. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 28, 137–167. Science 302, 269–272. Flannery, T. F. (1994). The Future Eaters. An ecological history of Wigley, T. M. L., and Raper, S. C. B. (2001). Interpretation of high Australasian lands and people. Reed New Holland, Sydney. projections for global-mean warming. Science 293, 451–454. Fumai, T. E., Pezzopane, S. K., Weldon, R. J., and Schwartz, D. P. Wolfe, E. W., and Hoblitt, R. P. (1996). Overview of the (1993). A 100-year average recurrence interval for the San Eruptions. In Fire and Mud, Eruptions and Lahars of Mount Andreas Fault at Wrightwood, California. Science 259, 199–203. Pinatubo, Philippines, pp. 1–5 (C. G. Newhall and S. Grayson,D.K.,andMeltzer,D.J.(2003).ArequiemforNorth Punongbayan, Eds.). University of Washington Press, Seattle. American overkill. Journal of Archaeological Science 30, 585–593. World Resources Institute (1990).World Resources 1990–1991: A Ha¨kkinen, S., and Rhines, P. B. (2004). Decline of subpolar North guide to the global environment. World Resources Institute in Atlantic circulation during the 1990s. Science 304, 555–559. collaboration with the United Nations Environment Heinz Center (2000). Evaluation of erosion hazards, a collabora- Programme and the United Nations Development tive research project of the H John Heinz III Center for Science, Programme. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Economics and the Environment. Website at http:// Yamaguchi, D., Atwater, B. F., Bunker, D. E., Benson, B. E., and www.heinzcenter.org/. Reid, M. S. (1997). Tree-ring dating the 1700 Cascadia earth- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2001). IPCC Third quake. Nature 389, 922–923. Assessment Report: Climate Change 2001. IPCC, Geneva. Kukla, G. J., Bender, M. L., deBeaulieu, J.-L., et al. (2002). Last interglacial climates. Quaternary Research 58, 2–13. Lohrenz, S. E., Redalje, D. G., Verity, P. G., Flagg, C. N., and Matulewski, K. V. (2002). Primary production on the conti- History of Quaternary nental shelf off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Deep Sea Science Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography 49, 4479– 4509. S A Elias, Royal Holloway, University of London, Loutre, M. F., and Berger, A. (2003). Marine Isotope Stage 11 as Surrey, UK an analogue for the present interglacial. Global and Planetary Change 36, 209–217. ª 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Lowe, J. J., Coope, G. R., Sheldrick, C., Harkness, D. D., and Walker, M. J. C. (1995). Direct comparison of UK tempera- tures and Greenland snow accumulation rates, 15 000–12 000 years ago. Journal of Quaternary Science 10, 175–180. Introduction Lyell, C. (1830). Principles of Geology. John Murray, London. McNinch, J. E. (2004). Geologic control in the nearshore: shore- The Quaternary sciences represent the systematic oblique sandbars and shoreline erosional hotspots, Mid- study of the Quaternary, or most recent geologic Atlantic Bight, USA. Marine Geology 211, 121–141. period. This period is generally characterized by a Oldeman, L. R., Hakkeling, R. T. A., and Sombroek, W. G. series of glaciations, or ice ages, interspersed with (1991). World map of the status of human-induced soil degra- relatively warm, interglacial intervals, such as the dation: an explanatory note. Second Revised Edition. International Soil Reference and Information Centre, The current interglacial, the Holocene. The study of Netherlands, Wageningen. Quaternary environments began in the late eighteenth Oppenheimer, C. (2003). Climatic, environmental and human century. Quaternary geology and paleontology came consequences of the largest known historic eruption: Tambora of age in the nineteenth century, and other important volcano (Indonesia) 1815. Progress in Physical Geography 27, aspects of Quaternary science, such as paleoceanogra- 230–259. Petit, J. R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov, N. I., Barnolam, J.-M., phy (see Paleoceanography), paleoecology, and paleo- Basile, I., Bender, M., Chappellaz, J., Davis, M., Delayque, G., climatology (see Introduction), developed to a much Delmotte, M., Kotlyakov, V. M., Legrand, M., Lipenkov, greater extent in the twentieth century. As with many V. Y., Lorius, C., Pe´pin, L., Ritz, C., Saltzman, E., and branches of science, the pioneers in Quaternary stu- Stievenard, M. (1999). Climate and atmospheric history of dieshadtoworkhardtoovercomemanywidelyheld, the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica. Nature 399, 429–436. erroneous ideas from previous generations of scholars. Rignot, E., and Thomas, R. H. (2002). Mass balance of polar ice At the beginning of the nineteenth century, science sheets. Science 297, 1502–1506. itself was rapidly changing. Up until that time, univer- Smith, R. B., and Siegel, L. (2000). Windows into the Earth: the sity professors and other scholars who performed geologic story of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park. scientific research were mostly generalists who dabbled Oxford University Press, New York. United Nations Environment Program (2005). One Planet Many in many different fields. They looked upon themselves People: Atlas of Our Changing Environment. pp. 336. as natural historians, studying the workings of the INTRODUCTION/History of Quaternary Science 11 natural world, as their whimsy led them. The early nineteenth century saw the beginnings of specialization in science. As the level of scientific knowledge was rapidly increasing, it was no longer possible for indivi- dual scholars to keep abreast of all the new discoveries. Peoplebegantodevotetheirtimeandenergytooneor just a few lines of research. This new, focused style of scientific study brought great leaps forward for science as a whole, and for Quaternary science, in particular, as we shall see, below. Establishing the Geologic Framework The term ‘Quaternary’ was coined by an Italian mining engineer, Giovanni Arduino (1714–95). He distinguished four orders of strata comprising all of Earth’s history: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Figure 2 Charles Lyell (1797–1875). Quaternary (Schneer (1969), p.10). Arduino (Fig. 1) distinguished four separate stages or ‘orders’ which is likewise complicated. The term ‘Pleistocene’ was he recognized on the basis of very large strata coined by Scottish geologist, Charles Lyell (Fig. 2)in arranged one above the other. 1839, to replace his previous term ‘Newer Pliocene’ These four ‘orders’ were expressed regionally in (1833). Italy, as the Atesine Alps, the Alpine foothills, the Lyell defined the Pleistocene as the ‘most recent’ sub-Alpine hills, and the Po River plain, respectively. geologic era, and further specified that Pleistocene The term ‘Quaternary’ apparently was not used again rocks and sediments are characterized by containing until the French geologist Desnoyers (1829) used it to more than 90% fossil mollusks that are recognized as differentiate Tertiary from Younger strata in the living species. As glacial theory began to take shape Paris basin. It was redefined by another Frenchman (see below), Forbes (1846) redefined the Pleistocene Reboul (1833) to include all strata containing extant as equivalent to the ‘Glacial Epoch.’ Then Ho¨ rnes flora and fauna. (1853) introduced the term Neogene to include The Quaternary period, as we now know it, is Lyell’s Miocene and Pliocene. In response, Lyell divided into two epochs: the Pleistocene and the Holocene (see Overview). The history of these terms (1873) specified that the term Pleistocene should be used ‘as strictly synonymous with post-Pliocene.’ In the same publication, Lyell also separated the Pleistocene (glacial) from the ‘Recent’ (postglacial) time. The term ‘Recent’ was later replaced by the term ‘Holocene’ by Gervais (1867–69). Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century, the stratigraphic nomenclature of the Quaternary period was firmly established (see Overview). However, no one knew when the Tertiary ended and the Quaternary began. In geology, it is standard proce- dure to designate a type locality that typifies such boundaries between major stratigraphic units. The 18th International Geological Congress (London, 1948) resolved to select a type locality for the Pliocene–Pleistocene (Tertiary–Quaternary) bound- ary. After three decades of deliberations, the Vrica section in Calabria, southern Italy, was finally selected. Hence the Plio-Pleistocene boundary was established at this site, where the boundary falls at ca. 1.64 Ma (Aguirre and Pasini, 1985; Bassett, 1985). Hilgen (1991) calibrated this age, based
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