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Geological History Of Europe
The formation of Europe as a coherent landmass dates to after the breakup of Pangaea, taking place during the Oligocene and completed by the early Neogene period, some 20 million years ago. Pre-Pleistocene Alpine orogeny started as early as the Mesozoic with the formation of the Alpide belt, some 200 Mya. Even earlier orogenies relevant for the ultimate formation of Europe are the Caledonian orogeny, some 400 Mya and the Variscan orogeny, some 300 Mya. Until the lower Oligocene period, about 32 Mya, the future lands of Europe were an island continent, separated from Asia by a shallow sea, but possessing intermittent land-bridge connections to North America via Greenland. Many animal species from the much larger North America colonized Europe during these times. As sea levels changed and sediments accumulated, the sea between Europe and Asia gradually dried out and Europe became a western appendage of the Earth's largest land mass. Pleistocene The Pleistocene epoch laste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mediterranean Rupelian
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant. The Sea has played a central role in the history of Western civilization. Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago. The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about , representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface, but its connection to the Atlantic via the Strait of Gibraltar—the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Preboreal
The Preboreal is an informal stage of the Holocene epoch. It is preceded by the Tarantian and succeeded by the Boreal. It lasted from 10,300 to 9,000 BP in radiocarbon years or 8350BC to 7050BC in Gregorian calendar years (8th millennium BC). It is the first stage of the Holocene epoch. The Preboreal was an informal subdivision of the Holocene, and as stratigraphy and dating techniques have improved since this 1972 proposal the dates would be different if proposed today. Instead others have begun to use the terms Early, Middle and Late, which would be Lower, Middle and Upper in respect of Holocene sediments. If this terminology were to be used the preboreal would be replaced by Lower Holocene which would be dated 11.7 – 8.2 ka B2K. In July 2018 the International Commission on Stratigraphy (a part of the IUGS) ratified Greenlandian as the globally recognised first age of the Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal yea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prehistory Of Europe
Prehistoric Europe is Europe with human presence but before the start of recorded history, beginning in the Lower Paleolithic. As history progresses, considerable regional irregularities of cultural development emerge and increase. The region of the eastern Mediterranean is, due to its geographic proximity, greatly influenced and inspired by the classical Middle Eastern civilizations, and adopts and develops the earliest systems of communal organization and writing. The Histories of Herodotus (from around 440 BC) is the oldest known European text that seeks to systematically record traditions, public affairs and notable events. Overview Widely dispersed, isolated finds of individual fossils of bone fragments (Atapuerca, Mauer mandible), stone artifacts or assemblages that suggest that during Lower Paleolithic, spanning from 3 million until 300,000 years ago, palaeo-human presence are rare and typically separated by thousands of years. The karstic region of the Atapuerca Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geology Of Europe
The geology of Europe is varied and complex, and gives rise to the wide variety of landscapes found across the continent, from the Scottish Highlands to the rolling plains of Hungary. Europe's most significant feature is the dichotomy between highland and mountainous Southern Europe and a vast, partially underwater, northern plain ranging from England in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. These two halves are separated by the Pyrenees and the Alps-Carpathians mountain chain. The northern plains are delimited in the west by the Scandinavian Mountains and the mountainous parts of the British Isles. The southern mountainous region is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. Major shallow water bodies submerging parts of the northern plains are the Celtic Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Barents Sea. From the standpoint of plate tectonics, the ongoing northward drive of the African plate into the Eurasian plate in the Mediterranean basin is the most promin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Sea Deluge Theory
The Black Sea deluge is the best known of three hypothetical flood scenarios proposed for the Late Quaternary history of the Black Sea. It is one of the two of these flood scenarios which propose a rapid, even catastrophic, rise in sea level of the Black Sea during the Late Quaternary.Yanko-Hombach, V., Mudie, P., and Gilbert, A. S., 2011, ''Was the Black Sea catastrophically flooded during the post-glacial? Geological evidence and impacts'', in Benjamin, J. et al. (eds.), ''Underwater Archaeology and the Submerged Prehistory of Europe'': Oxbow Books, p. 245–262. History In 1997, William Ryan, Walter Pitman, Petko Dimitrov, and their colleagues first published the ''Black Sea deluge hypothesis''. They proposed that a catastrophic inflow of Mediterranean seawater into the Black Sea freshwater lake occurred around 7600 years ago, . As proposed, the Early Holocene Black Sea flood scenario describes events that would have profoundly affected prehistoric settlement in eastern Eur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East European Craton
The East European Craton (EEC) is the core of the Baltica proto-plate and consists of three crustal regions/segments: Fennoscandia to the northwest, Volgo-Uralia to the east, and Sarmatia to the south. Fennoscandia includes the Baltic Shield (also referred to as the Fennoscandian Shield) and has a diversified accretionary Archaean and early Proterozoic crust, while Sarmatia has an older Archaean crust. The Volgo-Uralia region has a thick sedimentary cover, however deep drillings have revealed mostly Archaean crust. There are two shields in the East European Craton: the Baltic/Fennoscandian shield and the Ukrainian shield. The Ukrainian Shield and the Voronezh Massif consists of 3.2-3.8 Ga Archaean crust in the southwest and east, and 2.3-2.1 Ga Early Proterozoic orogenic belts. The Ural Mountains are the eastern margin of the East European Craton and mark the Late Paleozoic orogenic collision of the East European Craton with the Siberian cratons. The southern margin of the cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paleolithic Europe
Paleolithic Europe, or Old Stone Age Europe, encompasses the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age in Europe from the arrival of the first archaic humans, about 1.4 million years ago until the beginning of the Mesolithic (also Epipaleolithic) around 10,000 years ago. This period thus covers over 99% of the total human presence on the European continent. The early arrival and disappearance of ''Homo erectus'' and ''Homo heidelbergensis'', the appearance, complete evolution and eventual demise of ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and the immigration and successful settlement of ''Homo sapiens'' all have taken place during the European Paleolithic. Overview The period is divided into: * the Lower Paleolithic, from the earliest human presence (''Homo antecessor'' and ''Homo heidelbergensis'') to the Holstein interglacial, c. 1.4 to 0.3 million years ago; * the Middle Paleolithic, marked by the presence of Neanderthals, 300,000 to 40,000 years ago; * the Upper Paleolithic, c. 46,000 to 12,000 years a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Land Mammal Age
The European Land Mammal Mega Zones (abbreviation: ELMMZ, more commonly known as European land mammal ages or ELMA) are zones in rock layers that have a specific assemblage of fossils (biozones) based on occurrences of fossil assemblages of European land mammals. These biozones cover most of the Cenozoic, with particular focus having been paid to the Neogene and Paleogene systems (i.e. rock layers which are 65.5 to 2.588 million years old), the Quaternary has several competing systems. In cases when fossils of mammals are abundant, stratigraphers and paleontologists can use these biozones as a more practical regional alternative to the stages of the official ICS geologic timescale. European Land Mammal Mega Zones are often also confusingly referred to as ages, stages, or intervals. Biostratigraphic methods Mammal zones were, like all biozones, established using geographic place names where fossil materials were obtained. The basic unit of measure is the first/last boundary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The Black Sea is supplied by major rivers, principally the Danube, Dnieper, and Don. Consequently, while six countries have a coastline on the sea, its drainage basin includes parts of 24 countries in Europe. The Black Sea covers (not including the Sea of Azov), has a maximum depth of , and a volume of . Most of its coasts ascend rapidly. These rises are the Pontic Mountains to the south, bar the southwest-facing peninsulas, the Caucasus Mountains to the east, and the Crimean Mountains to the mid-north. In the west, the coast is generally small floodplains below foothills such as the Strandzha; Cape Emine, a dwindling of the east end of the Balkan Mountains; and the Dobruja Plateau considerably farth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, and over six thousand smaller islands."British Isles", ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. They have a total area of and a combined population of almost 72 million, and include two sovereign states, the Republic of Ireland (which covers roughly five-sixths of Ireland), and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Channel Islands, off the north coast of France, are normally taken to be part of the British Isles, even though they do not form part of the archipelago. The oldest rocks are 2.7 billion years old and are found in Ireland, Wales and the northwest of Scotland. During the Silurian period, the north-western regions collided with the south-east, which had been part of a separate continental landmass. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subatlantic
The Subatlantic is the current climatic age of the Holocene epoch. It started about 2,500 years BP and is still ongoing. Its average temperatures are slightly lower than during the preceding Subboreal and Atlantic. During its course, the temperature underwent several oscillations, which had a strong influence on fauna and flora and thus indirectly on the evolution of human civilizations. With intensifying industrialisation, human society started to stress the natural climatic cycles with increased greenhouse gas emissions. History and stratigraphy The term ''subatlantic'' was first introduced in 1889 by Rutger Sernander to differentiate it from Axel Blytt's ''atlantic''. It follows upon the previous ''subboreal''. According to Franz Firbas (1949) and Litt ''et al.'' (2001) the subatlantic consists of the pollen zones IX and X. This corresponds in the scheme of Fritz Theodor Overbeck to the pollen zones XI and XII. In climate stratigraphy the subatlantic is usually subdivide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subboreal
The Subboreal is a climatic period, immediately before the present one, of the Holocene. It lasted from 3710 to 450 BCE. Etymology The composite scientific term ''Subboreal'', meaning "below the Boreal," is derived from the Latin ''sub'' (below, under) and the Greek ''Βορέας'', from Boreas, the god of the North Wind. The word was first introduced in 1889 by Rutger Sernander to distinguish it from Axel Blytt's Boreal, which had been established in 1876. History The Subboreal followed the Atlantic and was followed by the Subatlantic. The Subboreal is equivalent to W. H. Zagwijn's pollen zones IVa and IVb and T. Litt's pollen zone VIII. In the pollen scheme of Fritz Theodor Overbeck, it occupies pollen zone X. In paleoclimatology, it is divided into an Older Subboreal and a Younger Subboreal. Historically, the Subboreal is equivalent to most of the Neolithic and the entire Bronze Age, which started 4200 to 3800 years ago. Dating The Subboreal is usually defined as 5 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
