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Fig. 51. The ice-fields and glaciers of the Third Glacial Stage are seen to be much less extensive than those of the Second Glacial Stage, shown in Fig. 25, p. 65. The continental depression and invasion of the sea is also believed to have been less extensive. At this stage there are broad areas free from ice between the Scandinavian, the Alpine, and the Pyrenean ice-caps. Drawn by C. A. Reeds, after James Geikie. (Compare Fig. 13.)

Along the borders of these great ice-fields in both countries a cold and moist climate prevailed, for a prime condition of glaciation is the heavy precipitation of snow. In northern Europe, between the great Alpine and Scandinavian ice-fields of the third glaciation a cold climate undoubtedly prevailed; in the region of the Neckar River, near Cannstatt, is found a deposit known as 'mammoth loam,' which Koken believed to be contemporaneous with the period of the third glaciation, although the evidence is certainly not convincing.[(41)] Here are found fossil remains of the Scandinavian reindeer, also of two very important new arrivals in Europe from the tundra regions of the far northeast, animals which had wandered along the southern borders of the Scandinavian ice-sheet from the tundras of northern Russia and Siberia. This is the first appearance in western Europe of the woolly mammoth (E. primigenius) and the woolly rhinoceros (D. antiquitatis). In this 'mammoth loam' there also occur two species of horse, the giant deer (Megaceros), the stag, the wisent, and the Aurochs. If the woolly mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros actually entered eastern Germany at this time, they certainly retreated to the north with the approach of the warm temperate climate of the Third Interglacial Stage, because no trace of these animals has been found again in Europe until the advent of the fourth glaciation.

(1) Gaudry, 1890.1.

(2) Smith, G. E., 1912.1, p. 582.

(3) Op. cit.

(4) Munro, 1893.1.

(5) Osborn, 1910.1, pp. 306, 307.

(6) Geikie, J., 1894.1, pp. 329-336; 1914.1, p. 227.