Holocene

The Holocene Epoch is a geologic period that extends from the present back about 10,000 radiocarbon years. The beginning of the Holocene was punctuated by the Younger Dryas cold period, the final part of the Pleistocene epoch. The end of the Younger Dryas has been dated to about 9600 BC (11550 calendar years BP). However, evidence for the Younger Dryas is not clear cut anywhere other than in the Northern Hemisphere.

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The Holocene starts late in the retreat of the Pleistocene glaciers. The Holocene is the fourth and last epoch of the Neogene period (second epoch of the unofficial Quaternary sub-era). The name is derived from the Greek holos (entire(ly)) and ceno (new). It has also been called the "Alluvium Epoch".

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Paleontologists have defined no faunal stages for the Pleistocene or Holocene.

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Epoch: The word epoch can mean either an interval of time, or a particular point in time used as a reference point....

Radiocarbon year: Raw radiocarbon dates are usually reported as years "before present" (BP). This is the number of radiocarbon years before 1950, based on the assumption that the level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere has always been at the 1950 level. Because this is untrue in practice, radiocarbon years do not corre...

Younger Dryas: The Younger Dryas stadial, named after the alpine / tundra wildflower Dryas octopetala, and also referred to as the Big Freeze , was a brief (approximately 1300 +/- 70year http://www.agu.org/revgeophys/mayews01/node6.html#SECTION00060000000000000000) cold climate period following the B?lling/Aller?d...