latest of the two major divisions of the Cenozoic Era. The Neogene Period encompasses the most recent 23 million years and includes the Miocene (Miocene Epoch) (23 million to 5.3 million years ago), Pliocene (Pliocene Epoch) (5.3 million to 1.8 million years ago), Pleistocene (Pleistocene Epoch) (1.8 million to 11,800 years ago), and Holocene (Holocene Epoch) epochs (the most recent 11,800 years). The Neogene, which means “new born,” was designated as such to emphasize that the marine and terrestrial fossils found in the strata of this time were more closely related to each other than to those of the preceding period, called the Paleogene (Paleogene Period) (65.5 million to 23 million years ago). The term Neogene is widely used in Europe as a geologic division, and it is increasingly employed in North America, where the Cenozoic Era has traditionally been divided into the Tertiary Period (65.5 million to 2.6 million years ago) and the Quaternary Period (Quaternary) (2.6 million years ago to the present).