The Last Ice Age

When we think of the words Ice Age we think of the last time glaciers covered a large portion of the Earth’s surface. There have actually been several ice ages in Earth’s history. The last Ice Age the Wisconsin began around 70,000 years ago and ended 10,000 years ago.

At the peak of the last ice age almost 98% of Canada was covered by ice. The plants and animals that once lived in glaciated areas were able to survive in some refuges in the Yukon and Alaska. The thickest ice was found in the Hudson Bay area and was as over 3000 meters deep.

Once upon a time Vancouver Island was home to the Columbian mammoths, helmeted muskoxen, and bison. Fossils documenting this have been found in the Saanich Peninsula and Shawnigan Lake areas, as well as in Courtenay.

These mammals were able to reach the island some 25,000 years ago by crossing the large flood plains that filled the Georgia Strait. The Vancouver Island Marmot, the only species unique to the island is believed to have actually crossed much earlier perhaps during the second last ice age.

The tree sloth’s that make their home in South America are actually one of the mammals from the North American Ice Age reaching North America more than 70,000 years ago during a warming period. Fossils have been found throughout areas of Canada including Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, the Yukon, and the NWT.

In Tanzania you will find one the best dinosaur sites in the world. Sediment a result of flooding more than 140 million years ago hold bones of hundreds of dinosaurs and skeletons from the Jurassic Period. There are even skeletons of the giant brontosaurs and the plated Kentrosaurus which was a small dinosaur with sharp spikes that were almost a meter long. It’s skeleton is very easy to recognize.

The ice age of more than 360 million years ago formed the north south chain of mountains sweeping mud and sand into the shallow lake in Quebec where they have found preserved fish fossils of the Devonian fishes that are in excellent condition.

One of the strangest giant dinosaurs was the Mamenchi lizard or mamenchisaurus. It was closely related to the diplodocus but it has a much longer neck and no other dinosaur has been found that had the same vertebrae structure as the mamenchisaurus.

Today in New Zealand you can still find a very interesting group of birds that are flightless such as the kiwi. There have been 15 species recognized back to the ice age all lacking wing bones that would allow for flight. The Moa one of the birds from the ice age became extinct over 300 years ago.

Giant dinosaurs that resembled the brontosaurs were found around the world until the end of the Reptile Age. They were most common in South America and were the largest known dinosaur. These dinosaurs are called the Opisthocoelicaudia and they weighed an amazing 30 metric tons. They were so powerful they could sit on their tail and extend their heads above the tree tops.

Fossils found from around 70,000 years ago would indicate that the polar bear we know today might be an ancestor of the brown bear. Fossils found in Germany, Sweden, and Denmark would indicate that the polar bear from this era was however much larger than the polar bears of today.

Another species that remains in western Canada is the panoplosaurus and there are also related species in Europe. These are what we know today as the artic seals which lived on the Champlain Sea more than 11,000 years ago. Many fossil skeletons have been collected from this region. The species adopted and still exists today.

The saber tooth tigers also find their roots in the ice age known then as the Scimitar cats with a bob tail and strong powerful forelimbs and stabbing teeth. Once very common in Canada and the western Yukon they survived until about 10,000 years ago.

The horny roof dinosaur called pachycephalosaurs actually had a skull that somewhat resembled that of the human skull. Skeletons have been rare in finding with one in Alberta and another in Mongolia, to date the only two found.

The Bering Isthmus survived in Alaska and the Yukon more than 20,000 years ago when most of Canada was engulfed in ice. The Inuit refer to the modern day species as the Omingmak. The western camel also survived during the ice age. In fact the Paelo Indians hunted them more than 10,000 years ago which is when the species finally became extinct. Full skeletons have been found.

The wooly mammoth once roamed Eurasia and North America and it has actually been found completely preserved in the frozen ground in Siberia. In fact primitive hunters killed the wooly mammoth for food until they became extinct.

The equus lambel was a small horse that survived during the Ice Age in North America. They are a direct descendent of our horses of today. There have been some well preserved fossil skeletons found in the Dawson area as well as the NWT, Alaska, and the Yukon. These wild asses actually survived in the Yukon regions up until 12,000 years ago.

The next ice age is more than 15,000 years away according to evidence from an Antarctic ice core which is the deepest and oldest ice core ever extracted. We are already seeing gradual climatic changes and weather pattern changes that are signs of an impending ice age. Without global warming scientific teams expect the present warm period to last at least another 15,000 years. However global warming could theoretically change the date of the next ice age.

Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory. This means that as a publisher you may reprint the articles that are included in our site, as long as the article is unedited and the author box is included with it's live hyperlinks.