PLIOCENE

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Paleo-Geography

• Continents & oceans in current position
• North & South America connect via Isthmus of Panama, altering global temperatures & currents
• Huge Gibraltar waterfall refills Mediterranean Sea
• Climate cool, dry and seasonal

Life

• All modern plants & animals families present, land & sea
• Grasslands, deciduous trees & shrubs spread as
  tropical forests recede
• Land bridges cause migration & mixing of animal species
• Many diverse elephant-like forms
• Carnivores (bears, dogs & cats) thrive & diversify
• First hominids - australopithecines - appear (below right)
• Many upright, tool-using hominids by end of epoch

  
  The giant Ground Sloth
  & armored Glyptodons   (left) were among the
  few South American   mammals to survive the   Panama connection

     (Image: Hiddenway)

Australopithecus afarensis (right) had a brain no bigger than a modern ape and could only use very simple tools. Nonetheless it was one of the first primates to walk upright - and thus a direct ancestor of modern humans.

        (Image: Familie-Rebmann)

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