page_title: Geology of New England
section_title: Pleistocene Epoch
hierarchical_section_title: Geology of New England / Chronology / Cenozoic Era / Surficial deposits / Pleistocene Epoch
caption_attribution_description: Map of North America with Pleistocene glaciers and the assumed path of Beringian wolves from Alaska to NTC. Dog icons represent sites where Beringian wolves have previously been found and paw prints represent the hypothesized path of the Beringian wolves through the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets. Natural Trap Cave is denoted with a black dot.
context_page_description: New England is a region in the North Eastern United States consisting of the states Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. Most of New England consists geologically of volcanic island arcs that accreted onto the eastern edge of the Laurentian Craton in prehistoric times. Much of the bedrock found in New England is heavily metamorphosed due to the numerous mountain building events that occurred in the region. These events culminated in the formation of Pangaea; the coastline as it exists today was created by rifting during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The most recent rock layers are glacial conglomerates.
context_section_description: The Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered Canada and what is currently the New England landscape, was a massive sheet of ice and the primary feature of the Pleistocene epoch in North America. Geologists are currently working on calculating the thinning of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which can improve the accuracy in de-glacial paleoclimate models and ice margins. Geologic records in the Northeastern United States can help reconstruct ice sheet volume history as well as the contribution of the Laurentide Ice Sheet to sea level rise.
  Cosmogenic Nuclides are radioactive isotopes formed when high-energy particles (i.e. cosmic rays) interact with the nuclei of Solar System atoms. Calculating the abundance of these nuclides is a way to determine the age of exposure of surface rock, also known as Surface Exposure Dating.
  A group of geologists in New England have been using an age-exposure method called the 'Dipstick' Approach, which can determine the rates of ice-sheet thinning and the age of glacially eroded boulder and bedrock surfaces. This approach has been used on various New England mountains, including  Mt. Greylock, Mt. Mansfield, Mt. Washington, etc. Their research supports rapid de-glaciation around New England, further constraining previous estimates of the Laurentide Ice Sheet thinning rates.
caption: Depiction of the Laurentide Ice Sheet covering most of Canada and the Northern United States
exif: {}