Re: Earth a million years ago

Most accounts put the start of the Pleistocene at 2.2 million years
ago. Remember that the Pleistocene consisted of 4 glacial stages
seperated by 3 interglacial stages.

These are:
Wisconsin Glacial (Youngest)
Sangamon Interglacial
Illinoian Glacial
Yarmouth Interglacial
Kansan Glacial
Aftonian Interglacial
Nebraskan Glacial (Oldest)

These stages followed each other at intervals that lasted from 30,000
to 100,000 years.

Some researchers put the end of the Pleistocene and the start of the
Holocene at 8,000 years ago. But technically there is no evidence that
the Pleistocene has ended, which would put us today in an interglacial
interval.

Fossil evidence shows that during glacials the biology shifted south
and during the interglacials it shifted north. I think it would be
safe to view the interglacials much as it is today. The glacial
intervals were probably cold and wet and yet warm enough to evaporate
400 feet of ocean water and deposit it on the continenent as a 3.000
feet thick ice ***. Therefore, glacials had to be warm enough to
evaporate the ocean water and precipitate it on the continent and yet
cold enough so that there was more accumulation then melting of the
ice ***. Summer was probably short or non-existent, fall was colder
than today and much longer, winter was short, and spring was long and
cold like the fall.


amh_library@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
mike4ty4@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hi.

This may be a dump question, but how did the Earth look 1 million years
ago? If you were given a globe of that Earth and Earth today, how
different would they be? Would you have to look close to see the
differences or not?

1 Million years ago you'd probably first notice that there was much
more ice and that the shoreline would be further out that it is now. I
don't know just how much ice and how far out the shore would be because
the Pleistocene Ice Age is estimated to have started a little over 1
million years ago. There would be no Long Island and the Great Lakes
would probably be under ice.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/ice_age/ice_age.pdf

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/vertpaleo/fhc/pleisto1.htm

Hope this helps,
Andy

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