Waalian interglacial

The Waalian interglacial (German: Waal-Warmzeit or Waal-Interglazial) (Zagwijn, 1960) was an interglacial period in northern Europe that lasted from about 1.45 million to 1.20 million years ago. It thus lies entirely within the Old Pleistocene and is thus part of the Cenozoic. Its name is derived from a major branch of the Rhine delta, the Waal. The Waal warm period could correspond temporally to the Danube-Gunz interglacial of the northern Alpine Foreland.

The warm period lies wholly within the Matuyama epoch, in which the earth's magnetic field, with a few exceptions, had a different polarity from that today: the magnetic north pole (actually corresponding to the magnetic south) lay near the geographic south pole.