The Pliocene isn’t a perfect crystal ball for today. For starters, scientists know why CO 2 levels are now increasing — burning of fossil fuels and other human activities (SN: 5/30/15, p. 15).

The globally warm climate of the early Pliocene gradually cooled from 4 million years ago, synchronous with decreasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. In contrast, palaeoceanographic records ...

About five to four million years ago, in the early Pliocene epoch, Earth had a warm, temperate climate. The gradual cooling that followed led to the establishment of modern temperature patterns ...

The Journal of Geology, Vol. 122, No. 1 (January 2014), pp. 1-15 (15 pages) AbstractLate Neogene upland gravels of the Mississippi River Valley are interpreted to be terrace deposits of the Pliocene ...

These discharge estimates, the first for the Pliocene Mississippi River, show it may have had as much as six to eight times the discharge of the modern river. This result suggests that (1) the North ...

Well, if you want to know how the climate-changed future will unfold, look at the past: In the Pliocene, 2.6 to 5 million years ago, carbon dioxide levels were about what they are today but with ...

Pliocene incision occurred across different tectonic and geodynamic boundaries, suggesting that a mechanism unrelated to these processes was responsible for incision.

The Pliocene is of particular interest because CO2 concentrations then were thought to have been about 400 parts per million, the highest level of the past 5 million years but a level that was ...

Environment Uncovering Pliocene landscapes in Canada’s High Arctic Researchers from the international PoLAR-FIT team are revealing a four-million-year-old forest beautifully preserved in permafrost ...

Pliocene Paleoenvironments of Southeastern Queensland, Australia Inferred from Stable Isotopes of Marsupial Tooth Enamel. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (6): e66221 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0066221 ...