The Tyrrhenian Stage is the last faunal stage

Faunal stage

In chronostratigraphy, a stage is a succession of rock strata laid down in a single age on the geologic timescale, which usually represents millions of years of deposition. A given stage of rock and the corresponding age of time will by convention have the same name, and the same boundaries.Rock...

 of the Pleistocene

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

 in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. It runs from 0.26 million (260,000) to 0.01143 million (11,430) years ago. It overlaps with the end of the Middle Pleistocene

Middle Pleistocene

The Middle Pleistocene, more specifically referred to as the Ionian stage, is a period of geologic time from ca. 781 to 126 thousand years ago....

 and all of the Late Pleistocene

Late Pleistocene

The Late Pleistocene is a stage of the Pleistocene Epoch. The beginning of the stage is defined by the base of the Eemian interglacial phase before the final glacial episode of the Pleistocene 126,000 ± 5,000 years ago. The end of the stage is defined exactly at 10,000 Carbon-14 years BP...

. The time period of the Tyrrhenian Stage is the same as that of the Senegalese fauna assemblage.

Definition

The end of the Tyrrhenian is defined as exactly 10,000 Carbon-14 years before the present (0.01143 +/- 0.00013 mya), which is near to the end of the Younger Dryas

Younger Dryas

The Younger Dryas stadial, also referred to as the Big Freeze, was a geologically brief period of cold climatic conditions and drought between approximately 12.8 and 11.5 ka BP, or 12,800 and 11,500 years before present...

 cold spell.

History of the definition

The Tyrrhenian Stage was first defined in 1914 by Arturo Issel

Arturo Issel

Arturo Issel was an Italian geologist, palaeontologist, malacologist and archaeologist. He is noted for first defining the Tyrrhenian Stage in 1914...

 to describe the stratigraphic section containing Strombus fossils originally investigated by Gignoux. Strombus bubonius was the leading fossil.