Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or being the epoch of geologic time from about 1.8 million to 10,000 years ago, the older of the two epochs of the Quaternary Period. It is characterized by the alternate appearance and recession of northern glaciation, the appearance and worldwide spread of hominins, and the extinction of numerous land mammals, such as the mammoths, mastodons, and saber-toothed tigers.
  • noun The Pleistocene Epoch.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The name given by geologists, with more or less vagueness, to the lower division of the Quaternary or Post-tertiary deposits, or to that division which cannot properly be included under the designation recent. See Post-tertiary, Tertiary, and Quaternary.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective (Geol.) Of or pertaining to the epoch, or the deposits, following the Tertiary, and immediately preceding man.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective geology Of a geologic epoch within the Neogene period from about 1.7 million to 11,000 years ago; marked by the evolution of man, and the extinction of the large mammals.
  • proper noun geology The Pleistocene epoch.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun from two million to 11 thousand years ago; extensive glaciation of the northern hemisphere; the time of human evolution

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek pleistos, most; see pelə- in Indo-European roots + –cene.]

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