Würm glaciation

ice age), usually referred to in the literature as the Würm[1] (often spelled "Wurm"), was the last glacial period in the Alpine region.

[3] The corresponding ice age in North and Central Europe is known as the Weichselian glaciation, after the German name for the Vistula river.

[6] In the Gelasian, i.e. at the beginning of the Quaternary period around 2.6 million years ago, an ice age began in the northern hemisphere which continues today.

Glaciers repeatedly advanced from the Alps to the northern molasse foreland and left moraines and meltwater deposits behind that are up to several hundred metres thick.

Today, the Pleistocene epoch in the Alps is divided into several phases: the Biber, Danube, Günz, Haslach, Mindel, Riss and Würm glaciations.

Whilst they were hemmed in by the high mountainsides of the Alps, once these rivers of ice entered the foreland they often combined to form huge glaciers.

Violet: The extent of the Alpine ice sheet in the Würm glaciation. Blue: The extent in earlier ice ages
The Würm glaciation (in the north: the Weichselian) in comparison with the Riss (in the north:the Saale). The glacial advances were interrupted by warmer periods during which ancient European man, the Neanderthals , as successors of homo heidelbergensis , spread out from the mountain zones and over the permafrost boundary to the north and northeast. From about 40,000 BC modern Cro-Magnon man settled these regions.
The Würm glaciation, shown in ice core data from the Antarctica and Greenland
Moraines and gravel beds formed in the Würm glaciation near Leutkirch , Westallgäu , Germany, Zeil castle can be seen on the left