Mapping the Last Ice Age

The useful part

During the Last Glacial Maximum, the European landscape looked radically unrecognizable compared to today. Enormous ice sheets flattened Northern Europe, global sea levels dropped dramatically, and the sheer weight of the ice compressed Earth's crust downward by hundreds of meters. Press play on the map and you can watch the ice sheets spread and retreat across Northern Europe over the millennia.

How it works

• It combines modern terrain with modelled crustal differences, so the mountains shown are today's mountains at their Ice Age elevations, rather than a reconstruction of the actual landscape of 24,000 years ago.
• One of the most striking examples of this is Doggerland, the landmass that once connected Britain to mainland Europe.
• As sea levels rose, Doggerland was gradually submerged, transforming the geography of northern Europe.
• The map uses a Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection covering roughly 4,500 × 5,250 km.