Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Last Interglacial period began 130,000 years ago and ended approximately 118,200 years ago with an error margin of 6,300 years. Temperatures peaked between 128,000 and 123,000 years before present before declining steadily through the latter half of the interval.
Pieter Harting named this geological bed Système Eémien after the nearby river Eem in 1875 while examining boreholes near Amersfoort in the Dutch countryside. Subsequent researchers like Lorié in 1887 and Spaink in 1958 added detailed information about these molluscan groups to establish the foundation for identifying this warm period.
Global mean sea surface levels reached heights approximately six to nine meters higher than current measurements during the peak of this warm period. Ocean waters rose as fast as two point five meters per century according to recent research on marine sediment cores offshore of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Hippopotamus populations notably reached as far north as North Yorkshire in northern England though they did not extend much further east than the Rhine River. Large extinct megafauna including straight-tusked elephants and narrow-nosed rhinoceroses inhabited these temperate landscapes alongside Merck's rhinoceros.
Neanderthals colonized higher latitudes of Europe during this time interval after retreating due to unfavorable conditions earlier but were absent from Britain likely because the region existed as an island. They engaged in diverse food-gathering activities including fishing and big-game hunting targeting straight-tusked elephants across these regions.