How many ice ages did the Earth have, and can humans live at one time or another? – Mason C.
First, what is the snow season? This is where the Earth has long-term temperatures – millions to tens of millions of years – leading to glaciers and glaciers covering significant parts of the Earth.
We know that the Earth has had at least five ice ages. The first happened some two billion years ago and lasted 300 million years. The most recent one started about 2.6 million years ago; we are still technically advanced.
So why is the Earth not covered with snow right now? It is because we are in what is known as the “interglacial.” In winter, temperatures will fluctuate between cold and warm. Glaciers and glaciers melt through warmer layers, called interglacials, and multiply in more complex layers, named glaciers.
We live in the recent ice warming, which began about 11,000 years ago.
What was it like in the snow?
When most people refer to the “ice age,” they often refer to the last ice age, which began about 115,000 years ago and ended about 11,000 years ago with the onset of the present interglacial period.
At that time, the planet was much more incredible than it is now. When ice covered most of North America at its peak, the average global temperature was about 46 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius). That temperature of 11 degrees F (6 degrees C) is today’s average annual temperature.
That difference may not sound great, but it has resulted in much of North America and Eurasia being covered with ice sheets. The ground was also parched, and the sea level was shallow, as much of the Earth’s water was trapped in ice. Stairs, or dry grasslands, were standard, and the same was true of the savannas, grassy plains, and deserts.
Many animals present during the snowy season, including brown bears, caribou, and wolves, will know them. But there was also megafauna extinct at the end of the ice age, such as mammoths, mastodons, caterpillars with saber teeth, and giant sloths.
Opinions vary as to why these animals became extinct, and one is that humans hunt for extinction when they encounter megafauna.
