ice age

noun

Definition of ice age

1 : a time of widespread glaciation

2 capitalized I&A : the Pleistocene glacial epoch

Examples of ice age in a Sentence

changes that occurred during the last ice age

Recent Examples on the Web

Those animals lived 50,000 to 200,000 years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch, also known as the ice age. — Phil Diehl, San Diego Union-Tribune, "Whale fossil found at Oceanside resort construction site," 9 June 2019 After all, both lived primarily in cold regions during an ice age. — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, "Neanderthals and Woolly Mammoths Shared Genetic Traits," 10 Apr. 2019 But from a geologist's perspective, even current conditions are part of an ice age, since large ice sheets exist at the poles. — John Timmer, Ars Technica, "Researchers suggest we could tip into a hothouse Earth—here’s what that means," 10 Aug. 2018 The immediate cause of the ice age was a drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide by around 8 parts per million. — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, "European Discovery of the Americas Killed So Many People It Made the Earth Colder," 5 Feb. 2019 His collection also sheds light on how moraine study in general helped geologists in New York and elsewhere discover that the planet had experienced a series of ice ages. — William J. Broad, New York Times, "How the Ice Age Shaped New York," 5 June 2018 Instead, this cooling is caused by a minor ice age that happened hundreds of years ago. — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, "One Part of the Ocean Is Getting Colder, Thanks to Medieval Climate Change," 7 Jan. 2019 Is the big one about to blow, blanketing the U.S. with ash and sending the Earth into a volcanic ice age? — Fox News, "Quakes and eruptions spark talks of Yellowstone supervolcano," 2 Oct. 2018 The idea that there was widespread scientific belief in the 1970s about a new ice age is common among climate change skeptics, though in reality scientific concern over global cooling was limited. — Andrew Kaczynski And Nathan Mcdermott, CNN, "Trump's pick for top UN migration job gave misleading answers on tweets critical of climate change," 8 May 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'ice age.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.