| Summary: | At the last glacial maximum, vast ice sheets covered many continental areas. The beds of some shallow seas were ex-posed thereby connecting previously separated landmass-es. Although some areas were ice-free and supported a flora and fauna, mean annual temperatures were 10–13°C colder than during the Holocene. Within a few millennia of the glacial maximum, deglaciation started, characterized by a series of climatic fluctuations between about 18 000 and 11 400 years ago. Following the general thermal maximum in the Holocene, there has been a modest overall cooling trend, superimposed upon which have been a series of millennial and centennial fluctuations in climate such as the “Little Ice Age spanning approximately the late 13th to early 19th centuries. Throughout the climatic fluctuations of the last 150 000 years, Arctic ecosystems and biota have
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