The Tertiary Period marks the beginning of the Cenozoic Era. It began 65 million years ago and lasted more than 63 million years, until 1.8 million years ago. The Tertiary is made up of 5 epochs :
The Paleocene Epoch - 65 to 54 million years ago The Eocene Epoch - 54 to 38 million years ago The Oligocene Epoch - 38 to 24 million years ago The Miocene Epoch - 24 to 5 million years ago The Pliocene Epoch- 5 to 1.8 million years ago
Each epoch has unique characteristics for climate and geography. The plants and animals changed from epoch to epoch also.
In the early 1800’s a system for naming geologic time labeled only four periods. They were named using the Latin forms of numbers for first, second, third and fourth. The word tertiary means “third.” It was the third period in this system. Today, we use a different system, but the name Tertiary is still common for the first part of the Cenozoic Era.
Where is know wasn’t where it was in the Tertiary period. There is evidence that suggests that India was actually part of Antártica. Instead of the Himalayas, there was a vast ocean that was probably the south coast of China. Over the millions of years India gradually started moving north towards China because of plate movement. India collided with Asia and the force of the plates colliding caused the ground to rise. The ocean was in a way “squeezed” from between India and Asia. It probably just flowed into the Arabian Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The ground continued to rise, creating mountains, the Himalayas.
