Introduction
Most of the exposed limestones on Bermuda are less than two million years old; that is to say that they were deposited predominantly during the Pleistocene epoch. Climatic fluctuations of the Pleistocene were responsible for dramitic cyclic advances and retreats of the continental ice sheets. Ocean water was alternately bound up in, then released from, these ice sheets causing ossilations in sea level through a range of greater than one hundred and fifty meters.

During the Pleistocene, the truncated summit of the Bermuda seamount, which forms an extensive submarine platform to the north of the present islands, was alternately exposed and submerged. The subsequent land-form varied from a 1000 square kilometer plateau-like land mass to a chain of small islands similar in size to present day Bermuda - 55 square kilometers.