Whales were swimming around in what is now Tuscany.¬† Just to put things in context, 4 million years ago the world was much warmer than it is now and sea levels were higher.¬† There was no polar ice.¬† Our current period of ice ages separated by interglacial periods of thawing started a little over 2 million years ago.¬† That isn’t a lot of time if you consider that 2 million years is only 1% of the elapsed time since the demise of the dinosaurs.