|18 August 2008 GSA Release No. 08-42 Director - GSA
Communications & Marketing Studies of Dynamic Past Ice Age May
Help Prepare Society for Future Changes Boulder, CO, USA – This
new Special Paper from the Geological Society of America brings
together a wealth of recent work to understand the longest
icehouse period in Phanerozoic Earth history, the late Paleozoic
ice age. A better understanding of glaciation time frames and
climate fluctuation rates during this ice age may help society
prepare for a future Earth with rising atmospheric carbon
dioxide levels, rising global temperatures, rising sea levels,
and melting polar ice and glaciers. “Society stands to gain
significantly from improved understanding of the late Paleozoic
ice age,” says lead editor Christopher Fielding of the
University of Nebraska. The late Paleozoic ice age was a crucial
epoch in Earth’s history, representing the last time prior to
the Cenozoic icehouse that Earth experienced a protracted, long-
lived cold climate regime, and the only