Wednesday, 02 April 2025

Ice age

An ice age is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Within a long-term ice age, individual pulses of cold climate are termed "glacial periods" (or alternatively "glacials" or "glaciations" or colloquially as "ice age"), and intermittent warm periods are called "interglacials". Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres. By this definition, we are in an interglacial period—the Holocene—of the ice age that began 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, because the Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic ice sheets still exist.

Origin of ice age theory

In 1742 Pierre Martel (1706–1767), an engineer and geographer living in Geneva, visited the valley of Chamonix in the Alps of Savoy. Two years later he published an account of his journey. He reported that the inhabitants of that valley attributed the dispersal of erratic boulders to the glaciers, saying that they had once extended much farther. Later similar explanations were reported from other regions of the Alps. In 1815 the carpenter and chamois hunter Jean-Pierre Perraudin (1767–1858) explained erratic boulders in the Val de Bagnes in the Swiss canton of Valais as being due to glaciers previously extending further. An unknown woodcutter from Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland advocated a similar idea in a discussion with the Swiss-German geologist Jean de Charpentier (1786–1855) in 1834. Comparable explanations are also known from the Val de Ferret in the Valais and the Seeland in western Switzerland and in Goethe's scientific work. Such explanations could also be found in other parts of the world. When the Bavarian naturalist Ernst von Bibra (1806–1878) visited the Chilean Andes in 1849–1850, the natives attributed fossil moraines to the former action of glaciers.

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Temporary Pittsburgh Zoo exhibit takes guests to the Ice Age, brings extinct animals back to life

WPXI 02 Apr 2025

PITTSBURGH — A new temporary exhibit at the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium takes visitors back in time to come face-to-face with incredible extinct animals. Ice Age. Frozen in Time runs from April 14 through Sept. 1 ... Watch WPXI NOW ... ....

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State Journal/WiscNews All-Supernova girls hockey team

Madison 02 Apr 2025

Follow the results as they come in Trump's funding cuts threaten Wisconsin Ice Age Trail's projects and programs How a 'week of silence' led Wisconsin men's basketball guard to enter transfer portal ...

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Gretzky's loyalty, legacy questioned due to ties with Trump

Madison 02 Apr 2025

Our endorsement for Wisconsin superintendent of schools Our endorsement for Wisconsin Supreme Court Trump's funding cuts threaten Wisconsin Ice Age Trail's projects and programs There are 72,000 boxes of unsold Girl Scout cookies around Madison.

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