Overview - Timescale, Physical Landscapes

Cenozoic means 'newly born' and is so named to emphasize that marine and terrestrial fossils found in strata from this period are more closely related to the preceding Paleogene. In North America, where the Cenozoic is divided into the Tertiary and Quaternary, this geological division is widely used and increasingly adopted in Europe.

• 23 - 2.6 ma
  
• Division of Cenozoic era
  
  Phanerozoic eon
  
  • Neogene Period
    
    
    • Paleocene
      
      • Danian
        
      • Selandian
        
      • Thanetian
        
      
      
      
    
    
    • Ecocene
      
      • Ypresian
        
      • Lutetian
        
      • Bartonian
        
      • Priabonian
        
      
      
      
    
    
    
    • Oligocene
      
      • Rupelian
        
      • Chattian
        
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  

Between 25 Ma and 23 Ma, there was a clear shift in the type of volcanic arc activity from aqueous mantle wedge-derived magmatism to localized extensional magmatism, suggesting that the arc impacted South America. By 15 Ma, as the impact continued, there was a general shift from deep-sea biogenic sedimentation to siliciclastic sedimentation. Between 9-6 Ma, the rate of change in the paleobathymetry of sedimentary layers reveals that the entire Panama Arc deepened significantly; some of the deepening between 9-8 Ma may be due to eustatic sea-level rise, but the subsequent deepening cannot be explained by sea-level change and is likely due to sedimentation. 6 Around 3 Ma, the Panama Arc began to rise again and has continued to the present day. The uplift of the arc was coupled with sea level lowering due to the expansion of the Greenland ice sheet around 3 Ma The Pleistocene glacial recurrence, which began at 2.6 Ma, created a land bridge connecting North and South America