Interglacial Warm periods between glacial periods. Interglacials caused the ice sheets to melt and become smaller or disappear. Some scientists think today's Holocene is nothing but a warm period between ice sheets. Megafauna Large animals of the Pleistocene. These megafauna included the mammoths, mastadonts, and ground sloths.
Paleontology is a branch of the biological sciences.
Paleontologists are interested in helping reconstruct ancient environments and determining how plants and animals have changed over the last hundreds of millions of years. During the Pleistocene, much of the earth was covered with ice. All living things take in carbon. Some carbon contains small amounts of energy, or radiation. At death, the amount of radioactive carbon begins to decay at a constant rate.