QUATERNARY GEOLOGICAL DATING AND TIME SCALE
第四纪地质定年与地质年表

Quaternary is a time - window of the last 2.5Ma, the latest and shortest period of the Earth history. Within this period, our planet have undengone several glacial and interglacial stages, fluctuations, in terms of warming and cooling. In other words,Quaternary deals with high - resolution records of past events and near- present dynamics of the Earth. Therefore, timing of these events and dynamics is of significant,and a difficult subject.A member of methods and techniques have been devoleped for tackling these problems. This paper reviews the advance of the related methods, their applications and the relationships between them.Relative dating methods used in Quaternary include lithostratigraphy, biostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy and archeology. Some memeric dating methods are useful to provide high precise age - data, and these are radiatic isotopic datings (K - Ar,Ar - Ar, ~(14)C, U-series, etc.), fission track, TL (OSL), and ESR In addition, varve chronology and dendrochronology can provide real absolute ages with supper-high resolution.These techniques have been widely applied to marine materials, glacial deposits,loess, and lacustrine sediments, which are the best bine-bearing sequences from different environments.According to the update data resulted from the mentioned investigations, the Quaternary period comprises the Pleistocene Epoch (ca 2.5-0.011Ma) which is subdivided into the Early Pleistocene (ca 2.5-0.78Ma), the Middle Pleistocene (ca 0.78-0.128Ma), and the Late Pleistocene (ca 0. 128-0.011Ma).