Friday, May 02, 2008

Excerpt from the book I’m reading

The Last Giant of Beringia: the Mystery of the Bering Land Bridge
by Dan O’Neill

Traditionally, scientists thought that there were four Ice Ages in the Cenozoic, the current era, extending back about seventy million years. American scientists have named them after states: the Wisconsin, Illinoian, Kansan, and Nebraskan.

And between each of these came a warmer, interglacial period they have called, respectively, the Sangamon, Yarmouth, and Aftonian.

In Northern Europe, scientists working in the Alps named the four corresponding glaciations there after rivers that flow out of the Alps into the Danube: the Wurm, Riss, Mindel, and Gunz.

To help keep things crystal clear, researchers from Britain, Northern Germany/Holland, Poland, European Russia, and Siberia have all offered terminology of different partisan provenience.

Hence, the last glacial stage is variously known as the Wisconsin, Wurm, Monastirian, Devensian, Weichselian, Vistulian, Valdaian, Sarta, and Ermakavo.

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