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After the long environmental stability/stagnation during the Boring Billion, the Sturtian glaciation began at the beginning of Cryogenian, freezing the entire planet in a state of severe icehouse climate known as a snowball Earth. After 70 million years it ended, but was quickly followed by another global ice age, the Marinoan glaciation.
The Sturtian glaciation was a worldwide glaciation during the Cryogenian Period when the Earth experienced repeated large-scale glaciations. [3] [4] As of January 2023, the Sturtian glaciation is thought to have lasted from c. 717 Ma to c. 660 Ma, a time span of approximately 57 million years. [3]
A less severe cold period or ice age is shown during the Jurassic-Cretaceous (150 Ma). There have been five or six major ice ages in the history of Earth over the past 3 billion years. The Late Cenozoic Ice Age began 34 million years ago, its latest phase being the Quaternary glaciation, in progress since 2.58 million years ago.
The most academically mentioned period of such a global ice age is believed to have occurred some time before 650 mya during the Cryogenian period, which included at least two large glacial periods, the Sturtian and Marinoan glaciations.
Because this ice age terminated only slightly before the rapid diversification of life during the Cambrian explosion, it has been proposed that this ice age (or at least its end) created conditions favorable to evolution. The earlier Sturtian glacial maxima (~730 million years) may also have been a snowball Earth event though this is unproven.
c. 720 Ma – Cryogenian Period starts, during which Earth freezes over (Snowball Earth or Slushball Earth) at least 3 times. The Sturtian glaciation continues the process begun during Kaigas – great ice sheets cover most of the planet stunting evolutionary development of animal and plant life – survival based on small pockets of heat under ...
Scientists warn that the Earth is just 15 years away from experiencing a "mini ice age" — something that hasn't happened in 300 years. Researchers in the U.K. created a new model of the Sun's ...
Cryogenian Period, 850–630 ... been so severe that there were ice sheets at the equator—a ... the Ediacaran Period to be a geological age of the Neoproterozoic ...