by Stanley C. Finney

did not agree with the chosen boundary level, and, following ICS and IUGS ratification of the GSSP for the base of the Gelasian Stage in 1996, they launched an effort to lower the boundary level to coincide with the base of the Gelasian Stage. They preferred this lower level because, they maintained, it more closely correlates with stratigraphic signals for the onset of global cooling, which they considered to mark the beginning of the Quaternary Period and Pleistocene Epoch (see, for example, Partridge, 1997). A joint Quaternary-Neogene task group was established by ICS in 1998 to consider the proposal to lower the boundary, but the proposal failed to receive the statutory number of votes (>60%) for recommendation. As a consequence, in January 1999 the IUGS Executive Committee reaffirmed the Vrica GSSP as defining the base of the Pleistocene and Quaternary (see Remane, 2000), such that a 10-year moratorium precluded further consideration of its redefinition. The Quaternary on ICS Charts Whenever shown in textbooks and on stratigraphic charts, time scales, and correlation charts, the Quaternary consisted of the Pleistocene and Holocene. Accordingly, with regard to the Vrica GSSP, the establishment of an internationally accepted Pleistocene boundary-stratotype is, by definition, the Quaternary boundary as well (cf. van Couvering, 1997: xv). Thus, the global stratigraphic chart produced by the ICS chair and secretary-general in 1989 (Cowie and Bassett, 1989) showed the Quaternary as a period composed of the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs and following upon the Neogene. So, too, did the International Chronostratigraphic Chart produced by the ICS in 2000 (Remane, 2000), printed by UNESCO, bearing the logos of UNESCO and IUGS, and distributed in registration packet