Don Glaciation

[1] It is correlated to Marine Isotope Stage 16 (MIS 16),[2] approximately 650,000 years ago, which globally contained one of the largest glacial volumes of the Quaternary.

[3] The Don Glaciation shows evidence of the most extensive ice sheet on the East European Plain, extending into the drainage basin of the middle and lower Don River in Russia, reaching 50 degrees north latitude.

[4][5][6] MIS 16 is a major glacial stage identified through measurements of oxygene isotopes in deep sea core samples (marine isotope stage) of Cromerian age, approximately 676-621 ka ago.

[7] In terms of global ice volume, it ranks as one of the two most extreme glaciations of the Quaternary, on par with MIS 12.

[2][6][1] It is unclear why the major glaciation of MIS 16 has left very little evidence in the geological records of Western Europe.

Five million years of glacial cycles are shown, based on oxygen isotope ratio believed to be a good proxy of global ice volume. MIS 16 and MIS 12 appear as the two most severe dips at 0.65 Ma and 0.45 Ma, almost reaching the bottom of the diagram.