The Tertiary Period (also known as paleogene and Neogene) is the first epoch of the Cenozoic Era, dating back about 65-1.8 million years, and the Tertiary Period means "the third derivative period". When the British geologist Leil studied mollusk fossils, he found that the newer the Tertiary strata, the greater the percentage of modern species contained in the strata.
In the early Tertiary Period, due to the expansion of the seabed and the disintegration of the paleogontology, the geological structure pattern and paleogeographic environment of the entire world underwent major changes. The ancient Mediterranean Sea disappeared, the Asian continent formed, the Tibetan Plateau rose, and modern mountain systems such as the Alps, The Himalayas, Rocky Mountains and the Andes were formed, and crustal movement caused widespread volcanic eruptions. In the Tertiary Period as a whole, the ocean occupied a larger area and the land area was smaller. In the late Tertiary Period, the global sea and land wheel corridors were very close to today, but there were many differences, such as China's Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea, most of which were still land.
Tertiary map
The Tertiary climate was warmer, wetter, and less varied than it is today, with tropical and subtropical climates extending into northern Canada. In the late Tertiary Period, the climate shifted to humid and hot, and the rise of the Tibetan Plateau had a major impact on the global climate, while in China the climate zone became increasingly pronounced and gradually turned to arid and cool. At the end of the Tertiary Period, the climate gradually cooled, heralding the imminent glacial period.
After the global mass extinction of dinosaurs at the end of the Mesozoic Era, the flourishing of animals and plants such as angiosperms, mammals, birds, and osteophytes in the Tertiary Period marked the advent of the modern biological era. Angiosperms, although present in the Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era, did not flourish until the Tertiary Period. Except for pine cedars, the rest of gymnosperms tend to decline, and ferns are also greatly reduced. Herbaceous plants, legumes, and Asteraceae began to appear, and plants in the Tertiary Period had obvious zoning. In the Tertiary Period, the once-flourishing ammonites were extinct, the arrowstones declined, while the bivalves (oysters, cockles, bead mussels, etc.), gastropods, mesomorphs, foraminifera (discworms, money worms), six-shot corals, sea urchins, etc. further flourished.
Tertiary ecology
Tertiary vertebrate changes were mainly manifested in the rise of mammals, bony fish, and birds. Mammals of the early Tertiary Period, such as marsupials, carnithorns, thunder beasts, primitive tapirs, amphibian rhinos, giant rhinocerosses in the order of odd-hoofed animals, carboniferous beasts, and ancient pig beasts in the order of even-hoofed animals have become extinct. Instead were the proboscis, hyenas, bears, and odd-hoofed horses and three-toed horses, the plate-toothed rhinoceros and the large-lipped rhinoceros in the rhinoceros, the pigs in the even-clovened order, the deer, sheep, and giraffes in the ruminants, and a large number of genera in the order Rodents and Rabbits. Some mammal taxa (whales, dolphins) have returned to life in the ocean. Other vertebrates such as cartilaginous fish, teleost fish, crocodiles, turtles, lizards, and birds were also common in the Tertiary Period. Fauna in Tertiary Africa and Eurasia are close, but some classes appear earlier, or some phyla longer. The fauna of North America and Eurasia is more different, and the fauna of South America and Oceania is even more different.
Monkeys began to appear 40 million years ago. 36 million years ago, the first apes appeared. 23 million years ago, primates (such as forest apes) were widely distributed, and great apes evolved separately from large apes, and great apes (such as Siva) already had human characteristics. 5 million years ago, the earliest humans appeared, australopithecus australopithecus.
Australopithecus australis