QUATERNARY PERIOD

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Quaternary period mean? 

• QUATERNARY PERIOD (noun)
  The noun QUATERNARY PERIOD has 1 sense:

1. last 2 million years

  Familiarity information: QUATERNARY PERIOD used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• QUATERNARY PERIOD (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Last 2 million years

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

Age of Man; Quaternary; Quaternary period

Instance hypernyms:

geological period; period (a unit of geological time during which a system of rocks formed)

Meronyms (parts of "Quaternary period"):

Holocene; Holocene epoch; Recent; Recent epoch (approximately the last 10,000 years)

Glacial epoch; Pleistocene; Pleistocene epoch (from two million to 11 thousand years ago; extensive glaciation of the northern hemisphere; the time of human evolution)

Holonyms ("Quaternary period" is a part of...):

Age of Mammals; Cenozoic; Cenozoic era (approximately the last 63 million years)

 Context examples 

An interval of the Quaternary period, from 1.8 million years before present to 10 thousand years before present.

(Pleistocene epoch, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)

An epoch of the Quaternary period dating from the end of the Pleistocene approximately 11,000 years ago until the present.

(Holocene epoch, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)