The sole surviving genus, Equus, had evolved by the early Pleistocene, and spread rapidly through the world.

Homo habilis evolved in South and East Africa in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene, 2. 5 – 2 Ma, when it diverged from the Australopithecines.

In the early Pleistocene, 1. 5 – 1 Ma, in Africa some populations of Homo habilis are thought to have evolved larger brains and made more elaborate stone tools ; these differences and others are sufficient for anthropologists to classify them as a new species, Homo erectus.

A number of large animals including mammoths and mastodons, saber-toothed cats like Smilodon and Homotherium, and giant sloths disappeared in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene — especially in North America, where animals that survived elsewhere ( including horses and camels ) became extinct.

Most scientists favor abrupt climate change as the catalyst for the extinction of the mega-fauna at the end of the Pleistocene, but there are many who believe increased hunting from early modern humans also played a part.

Distinct fossils from the early and middle Pleistocene were also discovered in deposits from China, and Sumatra.

The Tertiary also included the early Pleistocene.

Of these, the Cyprus Dwarf Hippopotamus, survived until the end of the Pleistocene or early Holocene.

As well as possessing many sites with the skeletal and cultural remains of both pre-modern and early modern humans ( e. g. at Kebara Cave in Israel ), later Pleistocene hunter-gatherers and Epipalaeolithic semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers ( the Natufians ), this area is most famous for its sites related to the origins of agriculture.

Fossils of early leopard ancestors have been found in East Africa and South Asia from the Pleistocene of 2 to 3. 5 Ma.

The extinct genus Miracinonyx was extremely cheetah-like, but recent DNA analysis has shown that Miracinonyx inexpectatus, Miracinonyx studeri, and Miracinonyx trumani ( early to late Pleistocene epoch ), found in North America and called the " North American cheetah " are not true cheetahs, instead being close relatives to the cougar.

The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative ; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor-Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor.

Another extinct species, Dow's Puffin ( Fratercula dowi ) was found on the Channel Islands of California until the Late Pleistocene or early Holocene.

Chipped-pebble tools dating from perhaps as early as 15, 000 years ago suggest that the initial human inhabitants of Taiwan were Paleolithic cultures of the Pleistocene era.

Graeme Barker notes there are: " similarities in the respective archaeological records of the Natufian culture of the Levant and of contemporary foragers in coastal North Africa across the late Pleistocene and early Holocene boundary ".

Several species of small hippopotamids have also become extinct in the Mediterranean in the late Pleistocene or early Holocene.

He argues that the ancestors of apes as well as humans may have had their evolutionary history influenced by exposure to flooded forest environments, and that based on the hominin fossil record, regular part-time underwater foraging began in the Pleistocene rather than the early Pliocene as Morgan ’ s model proposes.

The stoat's direct ancestor was Mustela palerminea, a common carnivore in central and eastern Europe during the Middle Pleistocene, and probably reached North America in its current form during the late Blancan or early Irvingtonian.

This flow pattern was deposited in the early Holocene period or the late Pleistocene.

* Dinofelis barlowi: It lived from the late Miocene to the early Pleistocene.

Two species described form the early Pleistocene of Africa are Homotherium ethiopicum and Homotherium hadarensis.

The bobcat is believed to have evolved from the Eurasian lynx, which crossed into North America by way of the Bering land bridge during the Pleistocene, with progenitors arriving as early as 2. 6 mya.

From over 600, 000 years ago, during the Pleistocene ice age, until the Anglian Stage around 478, 000 to 424, 000 years ago, the early River Thames flowed through the area where Chelmsford now stands, from Harlow to Colchester, before crossing what is now the North Sea to become a tributary of the Rhine.

Combining fossil evidence ( Miller & Bowman, 1956 ) and paleobiogeographical considerations with the molecular data indicates that the Yellow-billed Magpie's ancestors became isolated in California quite soon after the ancestral magpies colonized North America ( which probably happened some 3-4 mya ) due to early ice ages and the ongoing uplift of the Sierra Nevada, but that during interglacials there occurred some gene flow between the Yellow-and Black-billed magpies until reproductive isolation was fully achieved in the Pleistocene.

Though these machines are early forerunners to computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success.

Although belonging to the Bronze Age, they were the forerunners of the Iron Age, developing the manufacture of iron artifacts from as early as the 14th century BC, when letters to foreign rulers reveal the latter's demand for iron goods.

* Land Rover Series, early Land Rover workhorses ( forerunners to the Defender )

Although founded as a collège classique ( the forerunners of Quebec's college system ), Loyola began granting university degrees through Université Laval as early as 1906.

The clubs of the late 17th and early 18th century type resembled their Tudor forerunners in being oftenest associations solely for conviviality or literary coteries.

In the early 1990s, CompuServe was enormously popular, with hundreds of thousands of users visiting its thousands of moderated Forums, forerunners to the endless variety of discussion sites on the Web today.

These stories are considered to be important early forerunners of the modern detective story.

William Stukeley FRS, FRCP, FSA ( 7 November 1687 – 3 March 1765 ) was an English antiquarian who pioneered the archaeological investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, work for which he has been remembered as " probably ... the most important of the early forerunners of the discipline of archaeology ".

Photography as a technical process involving the development of film and prints in a darkroom originated in the early 19th century, with the forerunners of traditional photographic prints coming into prominence around 1838-1840.

His tackle catalogs, distributed to a small but devoted customer list in the late 1800s, are now highly collectible as early forerunners of today's enormous direct-mail outdoor products industry.

: καντάδα ) are based on the popular Italian music of the early 19th century and became the forerunners of the Greek modern song, influencing its development to a considerable degree.

A large percentage of residents became involved early in the Revolutionary War, and the sailors of Marblehead are generally recognized by scholars as forerunners of the United States Navy.

Modern groups and researchers of the " Rosicrucian Enlightenment " suggest that there is much evidence that the Rosicrucian Order not only has made herself known in the early 17th century through the Rosicrucian Manifestos, but has been active since the beginning of the Renaissance period, not only as an hermetic Order, but also through forerunners – geniuses of the western world, sometimes also known to be Freemasons – in the literary, cultural, ethical, political, religious and scientific fields.

Developing in the early 1970s, the RCG grew out of the " Revolutionary Opposition " faction of the International Socialists ( IS ), ( forerunners of the Socialist Workers Party ), being strongly influenced by the politics of Roy Tearse.

The Royal Marines Volunteer Cadet Corps and the Frimley and Camberley Cadet Corps ( both formed in the early 1900s ) were the forerunners to later government funded associations and still exist independently, uniquely offering cadet opportunities to younger cadets ( 7-18 ).

They were forerunners of the post-punk revival of the early 2000s, as they mixed their early post-punk sound with electronic and dance elements.

Elements of the design date back to the 1920s, and variants of the machine were produced until the early 1970s ; the machines found a variety of uses during the evolution of office equipment in the 20th century, including being among the first electric typewriters, computer input and output devices, forerunners of modern word processing, and also having roles in the machine tool and printing industries.

Groups such as Saccharine Trust, Naked Raygun, and The Effigies, which were active around the early 1980s, are considered as forerunners to the post-hardcore genre.

The herbals represent early attempts to create a coherent system of plant description and are forerunners of today ’ s science of taxonomy.

The forerunners of the Jobcentre Plus were the government-run Labour Exchanges, originally the vision of Winston Churchill, President of the Board of Trade and William Beveridge, who had worked for a more efficient labour system in the early years of the 20th century.

The early Katatonia albums, along with albums by bands such as My Dying Bride, Anathema and Paradise Lost, are sometimes considered forerunners of the death / doom genre.

His elegantly printed tackle catalogs distributed to a small but devoted customer list in the late 19th century, were the early forerunners of today's enormous direct-mail outdoor products industry.

In the early 1960s the winklepicker toe was popular with modernists, the forerunners of the mods.