ABSTRACT
This book examines the Earth’s history over a very short period of time-geologically speaking that is. It focuses on the climatic history since 2.6 million years ago during which time large ice sheets repeatedly advanced and retreated across significant areas of the Northern Hemisphere. Parts of Antarctica had been ice-covered for much longer (since almost 50 million years ago), but the establishment of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets heralded a major change in the Earth’s climate system. The Great Ice Age was not the first time that the Earth has been covered by extensive ice sheets: they also developed several times during the Pre-Cambrian, and during the Ordovician and PermianCarboniferous.
