Saale glaciation

[4] The maximum advance of the ice sheet in North Germany during the Drenthe Stage is described by a line from Düsseldorf via Paderborn, Hamelin, Goslar, Eisleben, Zeitz and Meissen to Görlitz.

From the eastern edge of the Harz eastwards (Poland, Brandenburg, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt) the ice advanced to about 10 to 50 km behind the maximum extent of the Elster glaciation.

In the Drenthe Stage the present day North Sea basin, Great Britain and Ireland were also affected.

Several species were hurt by the glaciation, including the woolly mammoths, which suffered a reduction comparable to the one towards the end of the ice age.

They were further shaped and changed during the later Weichselian cold period by periglacial processes such as wind-borne sand and loess.

Maximum extent (Drenthe stadium) of the Saale complex (yellow line). The red line shows the greatest extent of the younger Weichselian glaciation .
Graph showing glacial cycles in Europe from 600-100,000 years ago, with the Saalian period labelled
Aurochs skull from the Saale complex of Ilford , UK
The Würm glaciation (known in north Germany as the Weichselian) in comparison with the Riss (in north Germany as the Saale). Glacial advances were interrupted by warmer interstadials. In these some ancient European co-ancestors (the Neanderthals , as successors of homo heidelbergensis ) spread out from mountain zones over the intermittent permafrost to the north and northeast. Then from about 40,000 BC European early modern humans more greatly settled these regions.