Talk:Pliocene

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 3 January 2022 and 11 March 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cocoa2021 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Phxntxsos, Ndayap.

Supernova

What is the significance of the supernova(e) discussion? Do we have evidence that there was a mass extinction of oceanic fauna and, if so, can we attribute it to this more certainly than we can to the general cooling of the world's oceans? Would these supernovae also have resulted in extinctions amongst terrestrial fauna or would they have been somehow protected (and, if so, how)? While it is interesting to speculate on the existence of the supernova(e), if there is no information to tie them to significant ecological changes in the Pliocene epoch, should they be here? If that information does exist, why is it not listed here in the stead of this vague and mostly speculative section?

I agree that there should be some reason to include the supernova information. No clear link was made to the Pliocene climate, and no definite scientific hypothesis was mentioned. Names of those proposing such a hypothesis would be welcome, along with a mention of how the hypothesis is received in the scientific community. Otherwise this section should be removed. - Parsa (talk) 15:55, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I also agree. I also sject a reconstruction of the wording and moving it to a new artical. --SliimmmyyyyCat (talk) 15:29, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

If the theory has no support except among a tiny minority of geoscientists, and if it never had any impact on the development of our ideas of the Pliocene (wrong theories can nevertheless be historically important if they motivate fruitful new directions for research), then it does not belong here. I suspect that, even if the theory had an important influence on thinking about extinction events, it belongs in Extinction events rather than here. If it has a notable fringe following, then it should be its own article on that basis. Since I've heard of the theory before (suggesting notability), but have no indication it has much traction now, I'd be inclined to go with moving the mention into Extinction events as part of the history of development of ideas about extinction events. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 18:55, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

The abstract of the cited source (Benitez et al. 2002) states "We propose that ∼2 Myr ago, one of the SNe exploded close enough to Earth to seriously damage the ozone layer, provoking or contributing to the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary marine extinction." (I do not have access to the full text of this source). The end of the Pliocene is at 2.58 Myr ago. If the supernova is linked to Pliocene events, then presumably it must have occurred before the end of the Pliocene. I wonder why the authors did not write that the supernova explosion occurred at ~3 Myr ago (which is closer to, and more importantly before, the end of the Pliocene)? GeoWriter (talk) 14:49, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

I suggest that we create an article, Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary event, into which to move the contents of this section, plus a better description of the event itself and other hypotheses explaining it. There seem to be multiple reliable sources discussing this event and the associated extinctions. Alternately, rename this section to Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary event and expand it to better decribe the event itself and other hypotheses explaining it --Kent G. Budge (talk) 15:04, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

"... the distance range for the supernova 3 Myr ago is ~20-140 pc, with the most likely range between 50-65 pc" (see arXiv:2309.11604v1 at https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2309.11604 ). According to "Ascertaining distances for supernovae that struck the Earth 3 million and 7 million years ago" at https://phys.org/news/2023-10-distances-supernovae-struck-earth-million.html (2OCT23) this is too far for radiation from the supernova to have markedly disrupted Earth's ecology. Arguments for ascribing any late Pliocene extinctions to a supernova event are currently too weak to warrant mention in the current Wikipedia article or to justify creating a new article. Myron (talk) 22:52, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

AMK152's Geotimeboxes

AMK152 proposed in edits of 27 December 2006 a geotimebox for this article as follows:

Eon:	Proterozoic • Phanerozoic • [[]]
Era:	Mesozoi • Cenozoic • [[]]
Period:	Paleogene • Neogene • [[]]
Epoch:	Miocene • Pliocene • Pleistocene

I feel that the box information that is appropriate for the article is already in the footer, and that other extraneous information, such as previous eons, can be supplied where important, by links from the text. I removed the geotimebox and left the footer, pending discussion. --Bejnar 23:26, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Mammals

"The marsupials remained the dominant Australian mammals, with herbivore forms including wombats and kangaroos, and the huge diprotodonts." Article diprotodont contradict this. - phe 19:40, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I have some questions about the climatology and the paleogeography sections: First of all, the ice is described at spreading across Antarctica during the Pliocene. Then, the statement is made that the whole continent is iced in by the begining of the Pliocene. Is this really supposed to say the begining of the Pleistocene? That would make a lot more sense. Secondly, in paleogeography, the Mediterranean Sea is described as being formed in the Pliocene when Africa bangs in to Europe. But the Med had to already be there during the Miocene or there never would have been a Messinian Salinity Crisis. Or did it? Dre William (talk) 03:18, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the IUGS-based table in the upper right corner of the page

I am trying to figure out how to add this great little table to the page for Miocene, with the slight adjustments necessary (bold Miocene, convert Pliocene to a link, swap cell colors) -- where it would be nicely clarifying. But I don't see any code or links for the table -- it doesn't appear to be an editable element. What's up with that? I can copy and edit the html for the table that shows up on the rendered page, but that won't help me insert it as an edit on the other page. Anyone know? Thanks. Praghmatic (talk) 18:13, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Praghmatic, just add {{Neogene}} and the table appears in an article. The links will automatically appear blue or black as desired. If you want to edit the table, go to Template:Neogene. Good luck! Woodwalker (talk) 08:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Table difficult to read

This table below (I've just copied the lines from the main page) seems really difficult to read. Formatting and colours could do with improving.

The scale for time seems to be progressing in a right to left direction rather than left to right. Anyone know how to tweak it ? EdwardLane (talk) 10:09, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Human evolution during the Pliocene

Explanation of boundaries in lead section

The last two sentences in the lead section have read like this for some time:

"The boundaries defining the Pliocene are not set at an easily identified worldwide event but rather at regional boundaries between the warmer Miocene and the relatively cooler Pleistocene. The upper boundary was set at the start of the Pleistocene glaciations."

This is inaccurate and dodgy, both as statements of fact and as writing. "relatively cooler Pleistocene" should be "relatively cooler Pliocene" - the next sentence refers to the end boundary of the Pliocene, towards the Pleistocene which followed, and so the clause immediately before would be expected to be about the lower boundary, setting the line between Miocene and Pliocene. "Pleistocene" makes no sense here, not to anyone familiar with the geologic timescale anyway; most likely it's crept into the article as an error or because a few words were lifted out.

And the last sentence needs to be more precise. The glaciations didn't start all of a sudden at 2.6 million years ago, there was a progressive cooling and then a build-up of glacial caps in the Arctic. In (eastern) Antarctica, there had been a thick glacial sheet in place long before the Pleistocene, even in the Miocene. The lower boundary line of the Pleistocene was moved back by nearly a milion years by an agreement in 2009, and part of the reason for this was to include more of the lead-up to the glaciations. Our detailed understanding of the glacial episodes earlier than the very last one, and of temperature shifts within the last couple of million years, has grown in the last fifty years. So "the start of the Pleistocene glaciations" is both vague and rather inaccurate: there have been mighty glaciations of course but it's not as if they started abruptly at 2.6 mya, and the glaciations are no part of the defining marker for the Pliocene/Pleistocene boundary. Anyway, all of those article statements are unsourced, for good reason I guess. They need to be rephrased and only people who know anything about geology should bother with this.

As a first step, I changed "Pleistocene" to Pliocene in the first sentence, the one about the boundaries. This is quite uncontroversial; "between the warmer Miocene and the relatively cooler Pleistocene" makes no sense and/or skips past what it should clarify at this point: the Micoene/Pliocene boundary. The edit was soon reverted by user VSmith for no apparent reason other than that a bot had set the earlier, faulty version of the text. I advance that geology articles should look to what makes sense and is in accordance with established science, not to what some bot wrote or what "has been in the article for a long time". 83.254.154.164 (talk) 06:35, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I was in error. Seems that Pliocene had been changed to Pleistocene back in Sept. 2011 by a user with only one edit. Sorry 'bout that. Vsmith (talk) 11:52, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Wiki links for British stages

What is wrong with linking Gedgravian and Ludhamian to the villages which give their names to these stages? That's where these stages are observable and why they are so named. 21:38, 3 March 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gilgamesh4 (talk • contribs)

I think it would be like piping a wiki link for "Permian" to the city of Perm instead of to the Permian geological period, or linking "Cambrian" to the country of Wales instead of Cambrian geological period - such wiki links are not relevant enough to the geology. I suggest it would be better to create new geology articles Gedgravian Stage and Ludhamian Stage to avoid wiki linking to articles about villages - similar to what has been done for "Bramertonian" linking to Bramertonian Stage not the village of Bramerton, "Pastonian" linking to Pastonian Stage not the village of Paston, and "Beestonian" linking to Beestonian stage not Beeston Cliffs in West Runton. GeoWriter (talk) 22:41, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough - (I've added these to the requested articles page Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Natural_sciences/Environment_and_geology#Geologic_time_periods - Hope to be capable of writing these myself one day - Gilgamesh4 (talk) 13:13, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Pliocene.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 16:37, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Useful maps

Some of these might be worth adding to the paleogeography section:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pliocene_palaeogeography

AndrewRT(Talk) 18:42, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Netherlands

Please, consider revising the section on local stratigraphy of Netherlands. From Pretiglian on it is now considered to be a part of the Pleistocene. ThePaw (talk) 18:21, 22 December 2022 (UTC)