page_title: Ice age
section_title: Major ice ages
hierarchical_section_title: Ice age / Major ice ages
caption_attribution_description: English: Ice age map of europe, red: maximum limit of Weichselian ice age, yellow Saale-ice age at maximum (Drenthe stage), blue Elster-ice age maximum glaciation. Deutsch: &#160; jeweils maximale Ausdehnung der drei letzten Eiszeiten (Erweiterte Karte nach der Originalkarte File:EisrandlagenNorddeutschland.jpg von Benutzer:Fice) Selbst gezeichnet (ergänzt) und hochgeladen von Botaurus Datenquelle: www.uni-muenster und für den östlichsten Bereich: Wagenbreth/Steiner "Geologische Streifzüge" VEB Deutscher Verlag für Grundstoffindustrie, 2.&#160;Aufl. Leipzig 1985
context_page_description: An ice age is a long period 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. Earth is currently in the Quaternary glaciation, known in popular terminology as the Ice Age. Individual pulses of cold climate within an ice age are termed "glacial periods", and intermittent warm periods within an ice age are called "interglacials" or "interstadials", with both climatic pulses part of the Quaternary or other periods in Earth's history.
  In the terminology of glaciology, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in both northern and southern hemispheres. By this definition, we are in an interglacial period—the Holocene. The amount of heat-trapping gases emitted into Earth's oceans and atmosphere is predicted to prevent the next glacial period, which otherwise would begin in around 50,000 years, and likely more glacial cycles.
context_section_description: There have been at least five major ice ages in the Earth's history (the Huronian, Cryogenian, Andean-Saharan,  late Paleozoic, and the latest Quaternary Ice Age). Outside these ages, the Earth seems to have been ice free even in high latitudes; such periods are known as greenhouse periods.
  Rocks from the earliest well established ice age, called the Huronian, formed around 2.4 to 2.1 Ga (billion years) ago during the early Proterozoic Eon. Several hundreds of km of the Huronian Supergroup are exposed 10–100 km north of the north shore of Lake Huron extending from near Sault Ste. Marie to Sudbury, northeast of Lake Huron, with giant layers of now-lithified till beds, dropstones, varves, outwash, and scoured basement rocks. Correlative Huronian deposits have been found near Marquette, Michigan, and correlation has been made with Paleoproterozoic glacial deposits from Western Australia. The Huronian ice age was caused by the elimination of atmospheric methane, a greenhouse gas, during the Great Oxygenation Event.
  The next well-documented ice age, and probably the most severe of the last billion years, occurred from 720 to 630 million years ago (the Cryogenian period) and may have produced a Snowball Earth in which glacial ice sheets reached the equator, possibly being ended by the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as CO
  2 produced by volcanoes. "The presence of ice on the continents and pack ice on the oceans would inhibit both silicate weathering and photosynthesis, which are the two major sinks for CO
  2 at present." It has been suggested that the end of this ice age was responsible for the subsequent Ediacaran and Cambrian explosion, though this model is recent and controversial.
  The Andean-Saharan occurred from 460 to 420 million years ago, during the Late Ordovician and the Silurian period.
  The evolution of land plants at the onset of the Devonian period caused a long term increase in planetary oxygen levels and reduction of CO
  2 levels, which resulted in the late Paleozoic icehouse. Its former name, the Karoo glaciation, was named after the glacial tills found in the Karoo region of South Africa. There were extensive polar ice caps at intervals from 360 to 260 million years ago in South Africa during the Carboniferous and early Permian Periods. Correlatives are known from Argentina, also in the center of the ancient supercontinent Gondwanaland.
  The Quaternary Glaciation / Quaternary Ice Age started about 2.58 million years ago at the beginning of the Quaternary Period when the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000- and 100,000-year time scales called glacial periods, glacials or glacial advances, and interglacial periods, interglacials or glacial retreats. The earth is currently in an interglacial, and the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. All that remains of the continental ice sheets are the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and smaller glaciers such as on Baffin Island.
  The definition of the Quaternary as beginning 2.58 Ma is based on the formation of the Arctic ice cap. The Antarctic ice sheet began to form earlier, at about 34 Ma, in the mid-Cenozoic (Eocene-Oligocene Boundary). The term Late Cenozoic Ice Age is used to include this early phase.
  Ice ages can be further divided by location and time; for example, the names Riss (180,000–130,000 years bp) and Würm (70,000–10,000 years bp) refer specifically to glaciation in the Alpine region. The maximum extent of the ice is not maintained for the full interval. The scouring action of each glaciation tends to remove most of the evidence of prior ice sheets almost completely, except in regions where the later sheet does not achieve full coverage.
caption: Ice age map of northern Germany and its northern neighbours. Red: maximum limit of Weichselian glacial; yellow: Saale glacial at maximum (Drenthe stage); blue: Elster glacial maximum glaciation.
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