The Pleistocene Period Its Climate, Chronology and Faunal Successions

Abstract

THERE must be many students who, like myself, being interested in some geophysical problem of the Pleistocene period and not satisfied with the conclusions given in the text-books, have turned to the original papers to find exactly the evidence on which those conclusions were based. Anyone who has had that experience knows how difficult it is to co-ordinate the original papers: the evidence is partly geological, partly biological, partly cultural; the nomenclature is varied and often of local significance; the evidence is fragmentary, no one geological section giving the whole history, so that exposures in one region have to be matched against those of another, giving play to opinions rather than facts. Moraines in one place have to be co-ordinated with river terrace elsewhere, and these again with raised beaches far away; and one has always to consider the possibility of tectonic changes of the surface layers. It is a great example of not being able to see the wood for the trees, and one has longed for a clear map of the 'woods' with the 'trees' marked in their proper places and each kind of 'tree' labelled with a name which does not change from place to place.

The Pleistocene Period Its Climate, Chronology and Faunal Successions

By Dr. Frederick E. Zeuner. (Ray Society Volume 130, for the two years 1942 and 1943.) Pp. xii + 322. (London:Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., 1945.) 42s.