What was the Earth Like During the Miocene Epoch?
The Miocene epoch encompasses the time between 23 and 5 million years ago on Earth. It means “less recent” in Greek, a reference to the fact that that the type and distribution of marine invertebrates during the period varied substantially from that of the most recent period, from 5 million years ago to the present. Otherwise, there are many similarities between the Miocene epoch and the present day (the Holocene). The Miocene epoch is the first epoch of the Neogene period, which began 23 million years ago and continues to the present. The Neogene period was preceded by the Paleogene. The Miocene epoch marked the beginning of the world’s great grasslands, which aggressively covered land left behind by dying forests. The first significant planetary event that occurred during the Miocene epoch was the separation of Antarctica from South America, creating the Drake Passage and enabling the frigid Antarctic Circumpolar Current. This caused Antarctica, which had been a temperate forest clim
