History of Flora and Vegetation During the Quaternary

Abstract

Grosval’d (1983, 1988) had speculated about the existence of a huge last-glacial inlandice, which was said to have covered vast areas of Northern Eurasia, including Middle-Siberia and which might have joined the Tibetan inlandice. This in its turn is said to have existed during the first part of the last glaciation, triggering the later ice advances of the Northern Hemisphere, i.e. those of the so-called Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; Kuhle 1991, 2000). If these inland ice masses should have actually existed, the plants and animals of the Northern Hemisphere would have been seriously affected. Concerning the Tibetan Plateau, it meanwhile could be shown that an inland ice had never existed there (Frenzel and Liu 2001; Kamp and Haserodt 2002; also see the vast literature cited in these papers). Instead, there had only been various types of mountain glaciations occurring in this area. On the other hand, the question as to the extent and timing of the last-glacial North-Eurasiatic glaciations (approximately 115,000 to 11,560 b.p.) has meanwhile been investigated intensively by several research groups. It turned out that Grosval’ds hypothetical north-Eurasiatic inland ice had never existed. This has long been evident; new results on the timing and extent of last-glacial ice masses in these regions are most interesting.