[5][6] In 1759 Giovanni Arduino proposed that the geological strata of northern Italy could be divided into four successive formations or "orders" (Italian: quattro ordini).

[7] The term "quaternary" was introduced by Jules Desnoyers in 1829 for sediments of France's Seine Basin that clearly seemed to be younger than Tertiary Period rocks.

The Quaternary covers the time span of glaciations classified as the Pleistocene, and includes the present interglacial time-period, the Holocene.

This led to the problem that the proposed base of the Pleistocene was at 1.805 million years ago, long after the start of the major glaciations of the northern hemisphere.

[4][12] The Anthropocene was proposed as a third epoch as a mark of the anthropogenic impact on the global environment starting with the Industrial Revolution, or about 200 years ago.

This idea was initially disputed by another Swiss scientist, Louis Agassiz, but when he undertook to disprove it, he ended up affirming his colleague's hypothesis.

In time, thanks to the refinement of geology, it has been demonstrated that there were several periods of glacial advance and retreat and that past temperatures on Earth were very different from today.

[20][21] The Great Lakes formed and giant mammals thrived in parts of North America and Eurasia not covered in ice.