Key Events

• The Isthmus of Panama joins North and South America, cutting off warm  currents flowing from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.
• The Indian subcontinent collides with Asia, pushing up the Himalayan Mountains.
• Sea levels fall, creating land bridges between Africa and Eurasia and between Eurasia and North America.
• The Mediterranean is created.
• Changes in sea circulation patterns drive evolution in the oceans, with new marine mammals and fish emerging, including the largest known shark, Otodusmegalodon.
• Grasslands and savannahs replace forests. Animals adapt to eating grass.
• The first human ancestors (hominins) appear in the fossil record in Africa ~7 million years ago.

Facts, Debates & Trivia

• The Neogene name is derived from the Greek for ‘New Birth’.
• The famous fossil hominid, ‘Lucy’, lived ~3 million years ago in northern Ethiopia. The researchers who found the fossil nicknamed her after the Beatle’s song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’.

Conditions

• The global climate becomes seasonal.  
• Ice caps appear at the poles. The first glacial event of the Ice Age begins.

Timeline

23.03 – 2.58 million years ago 

(20.45 million years)

Where have you reached on the trail?