Quaternary Palaeoenvironments Group

Cambridge Quaternary

(formerly the Godwin Institute of Quaternary Research)

Welcome to the last 2.6 million years!

Knowledge of the palaeoenvironment and palaeogeography of the recent geological past is fundamental to our understanding of modern physical, biological and human environments. Understanding this period, the Quaternary, is the central focus of research in the Quaternary Palaeoenvironments Group (QPG).

The Quaternary, the last 2.6 million years of geological time, saw major climatic changes which caused ice sheets to advance into temperate latitudes. Repeated glacial episodes caused significant fluctuations in sea level, major geographical changes and major plant and animal population migrations. Sedimentary sequences record these changes in great detail and are central to unravelling past events.

We use a multidisciplinary approach which embraces wide ranging litho-, bio- and chronostratigraphical methods to unravel events during Quaternary and later Neogene time. Current research of the QPG includes:

Quaternary stratigraphy (of glacial, terrestrial, fluvial and marine sediments)
Palynology and palaeontology (of interglacial, cold period and post-glacial sequences)
Vegetational and environmental development (throughout Europe and beyond)
Biostratigraphy of Neogene/Quaternary deep sea and shallow marine sequences
Sedimentation and landform evolution (throughout Europe and beyond)
Historical human impact on natural environments (throughout the world)
Global continental drainage systems of the late Quaternary and the Quaternary as a whole

Featured pages

This site contains information about:

Who we are , what we do and where to find us ,
The group's research and publications
The group's Quaternary Master's course and Ph.D. projects
Relevant seminars: QPG, Quaternary Discussion Group , Specials, Department of Geography, other Cambridge departments.
News and photograph gallery.

And web publications on:

the history and role of the QPG
Drawings of the Quaternary of the North-east coast of Norfolk.a series of downloadable images by G.Slater and others.
History of major rivers through the Quaternary and the Tertiary
Controls on interglacial sedimentation in lowland British rivers.
the Quaternary geology of the Cambridge region
Protocol for AMS radiocarbon dating of plant macrofossil material
Sediment Archive Store
CUPOD - Cambridge University Palynological Online Database

The QPG is part of the Cambridge Quaternary (CQ - formerly the Godwin Institute of Quaternary Research - GIQR) ,
within the Department of Geography , University of Cambridge .

News

Clay minerals in onshore and offshore strata of the British Isles. 2006 (edited C.V.Jeans & R.J.Merriman) Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 550pp. Available from the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain & Ireland.
'Quaternary geologists win timescale vote - redefinition rescues once-threatened terminology from extinction' - read report in NATURE 4.5.09, SCIENCE on 5.5.09 and on Dept of Geography website. Formal ratification letter of base Quaternary and Pleistocene at 2.6 ma. Read Wiley-Blackwell news release.
The ICS vote to confirm the base of the Quaternary / Pleistocene at 2.6 Ma. Voting results.
'Quand la Manche était un fleuve' - discussion of the evolution of the Channel river and the work of Samuel Toucanne.
Brett's Boulders - the Glacial Theory in art in this month's Geoscientist, published by the Geological Society.
Now published - From Brandon to Bungay by Richard G. West, an exploration of the landscape history and geology of the Little Ouse and Waveney rivers on the Suffolk - Norfolk border of East Anglia. Available from Suffolk Naturalist's Trust, Ipswich.
University of Cambridge 800th anniversary celebrations. Our Octo has also been chosen for the University's main site. Image modified from an original in the Rijksmuseum Naturalis, The Netherlands.
Old friend of the QPG and ex-graduate of the SDQR wins national book prize! Juha-Pekka Lunkka of the Department of Geosciences, University of Oulu was awarded the Finnish National Science book of the year prize for 2009 for his book entitled: Maapallon ilmastohistoria: kasvihuoneista jääkausiin (Global climate history: from greenhouse to ice age) published by Gadeamus - Helsinki University Press. Read about it (in Finnish) in newspaper reports in Helsingin Sanomat and Kaleva.
Now published - Ogg, J.G., Ogg, G. & Gradstein, F.M. (eds) 2008 A concise geologic time scale. University Press: Cambridge. - Quaternary chapter 15 by P. Gibbard, K. Cohen & J. Ogg.
Now published - Episodes special issue 31, No. 2 , June 2008 - The Quaternary.

'A timewar over the Period we live in' - an article by Richard Kerr on the debate surrounding use and definition of the term Quaternary. Science 319, 25 January 2008.
Are we now living in the Anthropocene? - coming soon, the opinion of the Geological Society's Stratigraphy Commission. Watch GSA Today. Read report in the Independent Newspaper 26.1.08. Report on BBC website 'An Epoch in the making' 2.2.08.
Phil Gibbard presented the third in a new series of lectures entitled 'Second Nature', for the journal Nature. The lectures take place on the Second Life website where they are streamed live. Access to the lectures is through this site but details are available from Nature Network and is published on Nature Precedings. Phil's lecture, which is a follow up to the News & Views article he published in Nature in July, was called 'How Britain became an island'. It went out on Thursday 27 September. See also the report on the University's main website. Report in Cambridge Evening News.

QPG members joined BBC presenter John Craven to present the vegetational history of the famous Hockham Mere (Cranberry Rough) site on Monday 17 September 2007 for the programme Countryfile (watch a clip!). The report was screened on BBC1 TV on Sunday 23 September. With John Craven (second from left) are Chris Rolfe, Phil Gibbard and Antti Pasanen.

Catastrophic floods in the English Channel - read Nature article by Gupta et al. and News & Views by Phil Gibbard - read reports in the press. See details about Nature lecture above. Read latest report in the October 2007 issue of

PhD studentship topics beginning in October 2009.

Global chronostratigraphical correlation table for the last 2.7 million years . Compiled by P.L.Gibbard, S.Boreham, K.M.Cohen & A.Moscariello, published for the International Commission on Stratigraphy's Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy. New version now available.
Results of the ICS vote on the STATUS AND DEFINITION OF QUATERNARY and the base of the PLEISTOCENE published 14.5.07
Subcommission on European Quaternary Stratigraphy website on-line.
QPG members show Ray Mears how to survive in the wilds of Norfolk! - from the University of Cambridge Newsletter (December 2006/January 2007).

hockham 2006

Gibbard, P. & Markova, A. 2007 Pleistocene chronostratigraphic subdivisions and stratigraphic boundaries in the mammal record. Quaternary International, 160.

Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science. S.A. Elias (Editor), Elsevier: Amsterdam.

Saving Time - an article in the Cambridge Science magazine BLUESCI on the attempted suppression of the term Quaternary by Anne Hinton.
Early-Middle Pleistocene Transitions: The Land-Ocean Evidence - Edited by M. J. Head and P. L. Gibbard. (available from the Geological Society bookshop)

cover

Geologists call time on dating dispute - report in NATURE (16 June 2005) on dispute over definition and use of Quaternary.
Now available - Late Glacial and Holocene history of vegetation in Poland based on isopollen maps. Edited by Magdalena Ralska-Jasiewiczowa, Malgorzata Latalowa, Krystyna Wasylikowa, Kazimierz Tobolski, Ewa Madeyska, Herbert E. Wright and Charles Turner, Krakow, Poland: W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, 2004, 444 pp. - "a remarkable accomplishment from a co-operative group of scientists and is a pleasure to read."
Brigitta Ammann (University of Bern, Switzerland) Holocene 2006.
New compilation maps for the Last Glacial Maximum - compiled from the Quaternary glaciations - Extent and Chronology by Jürgen Ehlers & Philip Gibbard (see below). Click on the map below to see the new plot based on Google Earth projection.