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XI.—On a World Correlation of the Pleistocene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2012

T. T. Paterson
T. T. Paterson
Affiliation:
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
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Extract

Forty-six years ago James Geikie published the third edition of his book, The Great Ice Age, where he expressed the view that there were five main cold periods, separated by four warmer, within the Pleistocene. Despite the enormous research by glaciologists undertaken since Geikie's time no one has yet disproved this fundamental concept; indeed, research, though perhaps casting out some of the evidence used by Geikie, has only supported his hypothesis. Yet the works of this great geologist are neglected and apparently scorned, for the terminology which he set up in plain English to indicate his five glacial periods, determined by a very wide survey, has been discarded in favour of a Continental nomenclature having only a local significance. In this work I follow Geikie in naming glacial periods, first, second, third, etc., for this has a world-wide application. It is from the writings of this master, and also those of Professor J. E. Marr of Cambridge, that I gathered the general ideas expressed here in Part I, (a), (b), and (c).

Type
Research Article
Information
Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , 1942 , pp. 373 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1942

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