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Course: The natural history of the Quarternary - life during the ice ages, the present and the future

Vast and massive ice sheets have occasionally covered large parts of northern Europe during the last 150.000 years. With the coming and going of ice ages and warm periods the extent of the ice sheets varied. As the ice grew and vanished, landscapes formed. Different kinds of vegetation began to grow giving animals and later humans the opportunity to colonize the land.

Fortunately, sediments keep records of these mammals and vegetation types as fossil DNA. And sediments also act as climate archives, recording evidence of past warm and cold periods. The combination of state-of-the-art DNA techniques and geological methods has provided us with exciting new perspectives on life during and after the last ice ages in northern Europe.

Our course will give you an understanding of the relationship between the dynamics of the ice sheets, the development of the physical and biological environments and the arrival of man to northern Europe.

Among other things you will be familiar with how landscapes were formed, why ice ages come and go, life during the ice age with mammoths, wooly rhino and humans - and the extinction of some of the large mammals. You will also be given the chance to take a look into the future and predict how the coming climate changes might change our environments and conditions for life.