Last Glacial Period

The Last Glacial Period (LGP), also known colloquially as the Last Ice Age or simply the Ice Age,^[1] occurred from the end of the Last Interglacial 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 glaciation and the current Quaternary Period both began with 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), and the term Late Cenozoic Ice Age is used to include this early phase with the current glaciation.^[3] The previous ice age within the Quaternary is the Penultimate Glacial Period, which ended about 128,000 years ago, was more severe than the Last Glacial Period in some areas such as Britain, but less severe in others.

The last glacial period saw alternating episodes of glacier advance and retreat with the Last Glacial Maximum occurring between 26,000 and 20,000 years ago. While the general pattern of cooling and glacier advance around the globe was similar, local differences make it difficult to compare the details from continent to continent (see picture of ice core data below for differences). The most recent cooling, the Younger Dryas, began around 12,800 years ago and ended around 11,700 years ago, also marking the end of the LGP and the Pleistocene epoch. It was followed by the Holocene, the current geological epoch.