Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A less severe cold period or ice age is shown during the Jurassic-Cretaceous (150 Ma). There have been five or six major ice ages in the history of Earth over the past 3 billion years. The Late Cenozoic Ice Age began 34 million years ago, its latest phase being the Quaternary glaciation, in progress since 2.58 million years ago.
The Pleistocene (/ ˈ p l aɪ s t ə ˌ s iː n,-s t oʊ-/ PLY-stə-seen, -stoh-; [4] [5] referred to colloquially as the Ice Age) is the geological epoch that lasted from c. 2.58 million to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations.
This is significantly more severe than the ice ages during the Phanerozoic. Because this ice age terminated only slightly before the rapid diversification of life during the Cambrian explosion, it has been proposed that this ice age (or at least its end) created conditions favorable to evolution. The earlier Sturtian glacial maxima (~730 ...
A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate between glacial periods. The Last Glacial Period ended about 15,000 years ago. [1]
An artist's impression of the last glacial period at glacial maximum [4]. The LGP is often colloquially referred to as the "last ice age", though the term ice age is not strictly defined, and on a longer geological perspective, the last few million years could be termed a single ice age given the continual presence of ice sheets near both poles.
Little Ice Age: Various dates between 1250 and 1550 or later are held to mark the start of the Little ice age, ending at equally varied dates around 1850 1460–1550 Spörer Minimum cold; 1656–1715 Maunder Minimum low sunspot activity; 1790–1830 Dalton Minimum low sunspot activity, cold
The last ice age. Hall, a professor at the University of Maine, dates rock samples to determine when and how fast the ice sheet in the Cordillera Darwin mountain range retreated over the southern ...
Ice ages, long periods of reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and greenhouse periods , during which there are no glaciers on the planet.