Quaternary science
Quaternary science adds an important historical perspective to the understanding of current ecosystems and climate changes.
It later became clear that the term ‘Quaternary’ as described by Meadows and Finch (2016) was "a phase of highly variable climates, with marked periods of time when global temperatures were significantly lower than today and evidence for which was interpreted by Louis Agassiz as indications of a geologically recent ‘Great Ice Age’".
[4][7] The study of Quaternary science was first demonstrated by early nineteenth century French scientist Georges Cuvier.
He proposed that some animals that lived in the Pleistocene epoch were made extinct by some environmental ‘revolution’ (e.g. some catastrophic flooding events).
Milutin Milankovitch, a Serbian mathematician and geophysicist, was best known for his theory which involved the motion of the Earth and their relationship to long-term climate changes.
One of early calculations of Milankovitch offered information about the changes in incident solar radiation (as a function of season) for millions of years.
As stated before, Quaternary science is rapidly changing field, hence why there are always new researches being studied and published – providing evidences and establishing new techniques.
After all, Quaternary science is the study of our history spanning the last 2.58 million years, there are so many things left to be discovered.
For an illustration, some of the commonly known frameworks which contributed to the global interpretation of the records are chronology, palaeoenvironmental background and site formation processes.
[13] This area of research was deemed to be very significant to the archaeology of Indigenous Australia due to the fact that there are very few cultural markers that can be used for the relative chronology.
In addition to focusing on geochronology, the key role of Quaternary science to archaeology is to help the archaeologists in resolving some of their major problems relating to its impact on the surrounding environment, the Colonization of human in the past, cultural productions, and its mobility.
To be able to live, develop, and continue to reproduce, every species relies on upon its ecological requirements – including their environmental factors (climates, geology, etc.
), and vital biogeographic land to gauge the extent to which the global distribution and the patterns of species richness in palms reflect the effect of Quaternary climatic movement and pre-Quaternary legacies.
The research by Silva, Antonelli, Lendel, Moraes, and Manfrin (2018) in Southeastern United States suggests that there was a major impact of the early Quaternary climate change on the spreading and diversity of the Cactus species of South America.
[18] An article researched by Barnosky, Lindsey, Villavicencio, et al. (2016) provides evidence which support the findings that megafaunal extinction during the late Quaternary Period has a huge effect in causing several ecological state shifts in North and South America.
