Last Glacial Period

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"Last glacial" redirects here. For the period of
maximum glacier extent during this time, see
Last Glacial Maximum.

Chronology of climatic events of importance for

the last glacial period (about the last 120,000
years)
The Last Glacial Period (LGP), also known
colloquially as the last ice age or simply ice age,
[1] occurred from the end of the Eemian to the
end of the Younger Dryas, encompassing the
period c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago. The LGP
is part of a larger sequence of glacial and
interglacial periods known as the Quaternary
glaciation which started around 2,588,000 years
ago and is ongoing.[2] The definition of the
Quaternary as beginning 2.58 million years ago
(Mya) is based on the formation of the Arctic ice
cap. The Antarctic ice sheet began to form
earlier, at about 34 Mya, in the mid-Cenozoic
(Eocene–Oligocene extinction event). The term
Late Cenozoic Ice Age is used to include this
early phase.[3]

During this last glacial period, alternating

episodes of glacier advance and retreat occurred.
Within the last glacial period, the Last Glacial
Maximum was approximately 22,000 years ago.
While the general pattern of global cooling and
glacier advance was similar, local differences in
the development of glacier advance and retreat
make comparing the details from continent to
continent difficult (see picture of ice core data
below for differences). Around 12,800 years ago,
the Younger Dryas, the most recent glacial
epoch, began, a coda to the preceding 100,000-
year glacial period. Its end about 11,550 years
ago marked the beginning of the Holocene, the
current geological epoch.

From the point of view of human archaeology,

the LGP falls in the Paleolithic and early
Mesolithic periods. When the glaciation event
started, Homo sapiens was confined to lower
latitudes and used tools comparable to those
used by Neanderthals in western and central
Eurasia and by Denisovans and Homo erectus in
Asia. Near the end of the event, H. sapiens
migrated into Eurasia and Australia.
Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the
source populations of Paleolithic humans
survived the LGP in sparsely wooded areas, and
dispersed through areas of high primary
productivity, while avoiding dense forest cover.
[4]

Artist's impression of the last glacial period at

glacial maximum[5]

Contents
1 Origin and definition
2 Overview
2.1 Northern Hemisphere
2.2 Southern Hemisphere
3 Deglaciation
4 Named local glaciations
4.1 Antarctica
4.2 Europe
4.2.1 Devensian and Midlandian glaciation
(Britain and Ireland)
4.2.2 Weichselian glaciation (Scandinavia and
northern Europe)
4.2.3 Würm glaciation (Alps)
4.3 North America
4.3.1 Pinedale or Fraser glaciation (Rocky
Mountains)
4.3.2 Wisconsin glaciation
4.3.3 Tahoe, Tenaya, and Tioga, Sierra Nevada
4.3.4 Greenland glaciation
4.4 South America
4.4.1 Mérida glaciation (Venezuelan Andes)
4.4.2 Llanquihue glaciation (Southern Andes)
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Origin and definition
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. Glacials
are somewhat better defined, as colder phases
during which glaciers advance, separated by
relatively warm interglacials. The end of the last
glacial period, which was about 10,000 years
ago, is often called the end of the ice age,
although extensive year-round ice persists in
Antarctica and Greenland. Over the past few
million years, the glacial-interglacial cycles have
been "paced" by periodic variations in the Earth's
orbit via Milankovitch cycles.
The LGP has been intensively studied in North
America, northern Eurasia, the Himalayas, and
other formerly glaciated regions around the
world. The glaciations that occurred during this
glacial period covered many areas, mainly in the
Northern Hemisphere and to a lesser extent in
the Southern Hemisphere. They have different
names, historically developed and depending on
their geographic distributions: Fraser (in the
Pacific Cordillera of North America), Pinedale (in
the Central Rocky Mountains), Wisconsinan or
Wisconsin (in central North America), Devensian
(in the British Isles),[6] Midlandian (in Ireland),
Würm (in the Alps), Mérida (in Venezuela),
Weichselian or Vistulian (in Northern Europe
and northern Central Europe), Valdai in Russia
and Zyryanka in Siberia, Llanquihue in Chile,
and Otira in New Zealand. The geochronological
Late Pleistocene includes the late glacial
(Weichselian) and the immediately preceding
penultimate interglacial (Eemian) period.
Overview

Vegetation types at time of Last glacial maximum

Last glacial period, as seen in ice core data from

Antarctica and Greenland
Northern Hemisphere
Canada was nearly completely covered by ice, as
was the northern part of the United States, both
blanketed by the huge Laurentide Ice Sheet.
Alaska remained mostly ice free due to arid
climate conditions. Local glaciations existed in
the Rocky Mountains and the Cordilleran ice
sheet and as ice fields and ice caps in the Sierra
Nevada in northern California.[7] In Britain,
mainland Europe, and northwestern Asia, the
Scandinavian ice sheet once again reached the
northern parts of the British Isles, Germany,
Poland, and Russia, extending as far east as the
Taymyr Peninsula in western Siberia.[8] The
maximum extent of western Siberian glaciation
was reached by about 18,000 to 17,000 BP, thus
later than in Europe (22,000–18,000 BP)[9]
Northeastern Siberia was not covered by a
continental-scale ice sheet.[10] Instead, large,
but restricted, icefield complexes covered
mountain ranges within northeast Siberia,
including the Kamchatka-Koryak Mountains.[11]
[12]

The Arctic Ocean between the huge ice sheets of

America and Eurasia was not frozen throughout,
but like today, probably was covered only by
relatively shallow ice, subject to seasonal changes
and riddled with icebergs calving from the
surrounding ice sheets. According to the
sediment composition retrieved from deep-sea
cores, even times of seasonally open waters must
have occurred.[13]

Outside the main ice sheets, widespread

glaciation occurred on the highest mountains of
the Alpide belt. In contrast to the earlier glacial
stages, the Würm glaciation was composed of
smaller ice caps and mostly confined to valley
glaciers, sending glacial lobes into the Alpine
foreland. Local ice fields or small ice sheets could
be found capping the highest massifs of the
Pyrenees, the Carpathian Mountains, the Balkan
mountains, the Caucasus, and the mountains of
Turkey and Iran.[14]

In the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, there

is evidence that glaciers advanced considerably,
particularly between 47,000 and 27,000 BP,[15]
but the exact ages,[16][17] as well as the
formation of a single contiguous ice sheet on the
Tibetan Plateau, is controversial.[18][19][20]

Other areas of the Northern Hemisphere did not

bear extensive ice sheets, but local glaciers were
widespread at high altitudes. Parts of Taiwan, for
example, were repeatedly glaciated between
44,250 and 10,680 BP[21] as well as the
Japanese Alps. In both areas, maximum glacier
advance occurred between 60,000 and 30,000
BP.[22] To a still lesser extent, glaciers existed in
Africa, for example in the High Atlas, the
mountains of Morocco, the Mount Atakor massif
in southern Algeria, and several mountains in
Ethiopia. Just south of the equator, an ice cap of
several hundred square kilometers was present
on the east African mountains in the Kilimanjaro
massif, Mount Kenya, and the Rwenzori
Mountains, which still bear relic glaciers today.
[23]

Southern Hemisphere
Glaciation of the Southern Hemisphere was less
extensive. Ice sheets existed in the Andes
(Patagonian Ice Sheet), where six glacier
advances between 33,500 and 13,900 BP in the
Chilean Andes have been reported.[24]
Antarctica was entirely glaciated, much like
today, but unlike today the ice sheet left no
uncovered area. In mainland Australia only a
very small area in the vicinity of Mount
Kosciuszko was glaciated, whereas in Tasmania
glaciation was more widespread.[25] An ice sheet
formed in New Zealand, covering all of the
Southern Alps, where at least three glacial
advances can be distinguished.[26] Local ice
caps existed in the highest mountains of the
island of New Guinea, where temperatures were
5 to 6° C colder than at present.[27][28] The
main areas of Papua New Guinea where glaciers
developed during the LGP were the Central
Cordillera, the Owen Stanley Range, and the
Saruwaged Range. Mount Giluwe in the Central
Cordillera had a "more or less continuous ice cap
covering about 188 km2 and extending down to
3200-3500 m".[27] In Western New Guinea,
remnants of these glaciers are still preserved
atop Puncak Jaya and Ngga Pilimsit.[28]

Small glaciers developed in a few favorable

places in Southern Africa during the last glacial
period.[29][A][B] These small glaciers would
have been located in the Lesotho Highlands and
parts of the Drakensberg.[31][32] The
development of glaciers was likely aided in part
due to shade provided by adjacent cliffs.[32]
Various moraines and former glacial niches have
been identified in the eastern Lesotho Highlands
a few kilometres west of the Great Escarpment,
at altitudes greater than 3,000 m on south-facing
slopes.[31] Studies suggest that the annual
average temperature in the mountains of
Southern Africa was about 6°C colder than at
present, in line with temperature drops
estimated for Tasmania and southern Patagonia
during the same time. This resulted in an
environment of relatively arid periglaciation
without permafrost, but with deep seasonal
freezing on south-facing slopes. Periglaciation in
the eastern Drakensberg and Lesotho Highlands
produced solifluction deposits and blockfields;
including blockstreams and stone garlands.[29]
[30]

Deglaciation
Main article: Holocene glacial retreat
See also: Bølling–Allerød warming, Meltwater
pulse 1A, and Deglaciation
Scientists from the Center for Arctic Gas
Hydrate, Environment and Climate at the
University of Tromsø, published a study in June
2017[33] describing over a hundred ocean
sediment craters, some 3,000 m wide and up to
300 m deep, formed by explosive eruptions of
methane from destabilized methane hydrates,
following ice-sheet retreat during the LGP,
around 12,000 years ago. These areas around the
Barents Sea still seep methane today. The study
hypothesized that existing bulges containing
methane reservoirs could eventually have the
same fate.

Named local glaciations

Antarctica
During the last glacial period, Antarctica was
blanketed by a massive ice sheet, much as it is
today; however, the ice covered all land areas
and extended into the ocean onto the middle and
outer continental shelf.[34][35]
Counterintuitively though, according to ice
modeling done in 2002, ice over central East
Antarctica was generally thinner than it is today.
[36]
Europe
Devensian and Midlandian glaciation (Britain
and Ireland)
British geologists refer to the LGP as the
Devensian. Irish geologists, geographers, and
archaeologists refer to the Midlandian glaciation,
as its effects in Ireland are largely visible in the
Irish Midlands. The name Devensian is derived
from the Latin Dēvenses, people living by the
Dee (Dēva in Latin), a river on the Welsh border
near which deposits from the period are
particularly well represented.[37]

The effects of this glaciation can be seen in many

geological features of England, Wales, Scotland,
and Northern Ireland. Its deposits have been
found overlying material from the preceding
Ipswichian stage and lying beneath those from
the following Holocene, which is the current
stage Tis is sometimes called the Flandrian
interglacial in Britain.
The latter part of the Devensian includes pollen
zones I–IV, the Allerød oscillation and Bølling
oscillation, and the Oldest Dryas, Older Dryas,
and Younger Dryas cold periods.

Weichselian glaciation (Scandinavia and

northern Europe)
Main article: Weichselian glaciation

Europe during the last glacial period

Alternative names include Weichsel glaciation or
Vistulian glaciation (referring to the Polish River
Vistula or its German name Weichsel). Evidence
suggests that the ice sheets were at their
maximum size for only a short period, between
25,000 and 13,000 BP. Eight interstadials have
been recognized in the Weichselian, including
the Oerel, Glinde, Moershoofd, Hengelo, and
Denekamp; however, correlation with isotope
stages is still in process.[38][39] During the
glacial maximum in Scandinavia, only the
western parts of Jutland were ice-free, and a
large part of what is today the North Sea was dry
land connecting Jutland with Britain (see
Doggerland).

The Baltic Sea, with its unique brackish water, is

a result of meltwater from the Weichsel
glaciation combining with saltwater from the
North Sea when the straits between Sweden and
Denmark opened. Initially, when the ice began
melting about 10,300 BP, seawater filled the
isostatically depressed area, a temporary marine
incursion that geologists dub the Yoldia Sea.
Then, as postglacial isostatic rebound lifted the
region about 9500 BP, the deepest basin of the
Baltic became a freshwater lake, in palaeological
contexts referred to as Ancylus Lake, which is
identifiable in the freshwater fauna found in
sediment cores. The lake was filled by glacial
runoff, but as worldwide sea level continued
rising, saltwater again breached the sill about
8000 BP, forming a marine Littorina Sea, which
was followed by another freshwater phase before
the present brackish marine system was
established. "At its present state of development,
the marine life of the Baltic Sea is less than about
4000 years old", Drs. Thulin and Andrushaitis
remarked when reviewing these sequences in
2003.

Overlying ice had exerted pressure on the Earth's

surface. As a result of melting ice, the land has
continued to rise yearly in Scandinavia, mostly in
northern Sweden and Finland, where the land is
rising at a rate of as much as 8–9 mm per year,
or 1 m in 100 years. This is important for
archaeologists, since a site that was coastal in the
Nordic Stone Age now is inland and can be dated
by its relative distance from the present shore.

Würm glaciation (Alps)

Main article: Würm glaciation

Violet: extent of the Alpine ice sheet in the Würm

glaciation. Blue: extent in earlier ice ages.
The term Würm is derived from a river in the
Alpine foreland, roughly marking the maximum
glacier advance of this particular glacial period.
The Alps were where the first systematic
scientific research on ice ages was conducted by
Louis Agassiz at the beginning of the 19th
century. Here, the Würm glaciation of the LGP
was intensively studied. Pollen analysis, the
statistical analyses of microfossilized plant
pollens found in geological deposits, chronicled
the dramatic changes in the European
environment during the Würm glaciation.
During the height of Würm glaciation, c. 24,000
– c. 10,000 BP, most of western and central
Europe and Eurasia was open steppe-tundra,
while the Alps presented solid ice fields and
montane glaciers. Scandinavia and much of
Britain were under ice.

During the Würm, the Rhône Glacier covered the

whole western Swiss plateau, reaching today's
regions of Solothurn and Aarau. In the region of
Bern, it merged with the Aar glacier. The Rhine
Glacier is currently the subject of the most
detailed studies. Glaciers of the Reuss and the
Limmat advanced sometimes as far as the Jura.
Montane and piedmont glaciers formed the land
by grinding away virtually all traces of the older
Günz and Mindel glaciation, by depositing base
moraines and terminal moraines of different
retraction phases and loess deposits, and by the
proglacial rivers' shifting and redepositing
gravels. Beneath the surface, they had profound
and lasting influence on geothermal heat and the
patterns of deep groundwater flow.

North America
Pinedale or Fraser glaciation (Rocky Mountains)

Map of Pleistocene lakes in the Great Basin of

western North America, showing the path of the
Bonneville Flood along the Snake River
The Pinedale (central Rocky Mountains) or
Fraser (Cordilleran ice sheet) glaciation was the
last of the major glaciations to appear in the
Rocky Mountains in the United States. The
Pinedale lasted from around 30,000 to 10,000
years ago, and was at its greatest extent between
23,500 and 21,000 years ago.[40] This glaciation
was somewhat distinct from the main Wisconsin
glaciation, as it was only loosely related to the
giant ice sheets and was instead composed of
mountain glaciers, merging into the Cordilleran
ice sheet.[41] The Cordilleran ice sheet produced
features such as glacial Lake Missoula, which
broke free from its ice dam, causing the massive
Missoula Floods. USGS geologists estimate that
the cycle of flooding and reformation of the lake
lasted an average of 55 years and that the floods
occurred about 40 times over the 2,000-year
period starting 15,000 years ago.[42] Glacial lake
outburst floods such as these are not uncommon
today in Iceland and other places.

Wisconsin glaciation
The Wisconsin glacial episode was the last major
advance of continental glaciers in the North
American Laurentide ice sheet. At the height of
glaciation, the Bering land bridge potentially
permitted migration of mammals, including
people, to North America from Siberia.

It radically altered the geography of North

America north of the Ohio River. At the height of
the Wisconsin episode glaciation, ice covered
most of Canada, the Upper Midwest, and New
England, as well as parts of Montana and
Washington. On Kelleys Island in Lake Erie or in
New York's Central Park, the grooves left by
these glaciers can be easily observed. In
southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern
Alberta, a suture zone between the Laurentide
and Cordilleran ice sheets formed the Cypress
Hills, which is the northernmost point in North
America that remained south of the continental
ice sheets.

The Great Lakes are the result of glacial scour

and pooling of meltwater at the rim of the
receding ice. When the enormous mass of the
continental ice sheet retreated, the Great Lakes
began gradually moving south due to isostatic
rebound of the north shore. Niagara Falls is also
a product of the glaciation, as is the course of the
Ohio River, which largely supplanted the prior
Teays River.

With the assistance of several very broad glacial

lakes, it released floods through the gorge of the
Upper Mississippi River, which in turn was
formed during an earlier glacial period.

In its retreat, the Wisconsin episode glaciation

left terminal moraines that form Long Island,
Block Island, Cape Cod, Nomans Land, Martha's
Vineyard, Nantucket, Sable Island, and the Oak
Ridges Moraine in south-central Ontario,
Canada. In Wisconsin itself, it left the Kettle
Moraine. The drumlins and eskers formed at its
melting edge are landmarks of the lower
Connecticut River Valley.

Tahoe, Tenaya, and Tioga, Sierra Nevada

In the Sierra Nevada, three stages of glacial
maxima (sometimes incorrectly called ice ages)
were separated by warmer periods. These glacial
maxima are called, from oldest to youngest,
Tahoe, Tenaya, and Tioga.[43] The Tahoe
reached its maximum extent perhaps about
70,000 years ago. Little is known about the
Tenaya. The Tioga was the least severe and last
of the Wisconsin episode. It began about 30,000
years ago, reached its greatest advance 21,000
years ago, and ended about 10,000 years ago.

Greenland glaciation
In northwest Greenland, ice coverage attained a
very early maximum in the LGP around 114,000.
After this early maximum, ice coverage was
similar to today until the end of the last glacial
period. Towards the end, glaciers advanced once
more before retreating to their present extent.
[44] According to ice core data, the Greenland
climate was dry during the LGP, with
precipitation reaching perhaps only 20% of
today's value.[45]