Part One: Preliminaries -- 1. The Physical Setting -- The Changing Climate of the Last 20,000 Years -- The Dating Method -- The Ice Sheets -- Ice and Sea -- Ice and Fresh Water -- Ice and Atmosphere -- Ice-free Land: Refugia and Nunataks -- 2. The Fossil Evidence -- Fossils -- Microfossils -- Pollen -- Sediment Cores and Pollen Diagrams -- Dating: The Radiocarbon Method -- Dating by Volcanic Ash Layers -- 3. Interpreting the Evidence -- Some of the Problems -- Interpreting Pollen Diagrams -- Interpreting Geographical Range Maps: Animals -- Interpreting Geographical Range Maps: Plants -- 4. The Migration of Vegetation -- Shifting Zones of Vegetation -- The Starting Conditions -- Conditions in the Newly Deglaciated Land -- The Invasion by Plants -- The Renewal of Vegetation -- Ecological Inertia -- Photoperiodism.
Part Two: The Time of Maximum Ice -- 5. Eighteen Thousand Years Ago: Life South of the Ice -- Large Mammals and Their Environments South of the Ice Sheets -- Human Life South of the Ice -- Plants South of the Ice Sheets -- 6. The Coasts -- North America as an Extension of Asia -- The South Coast of Beringia -- The Western Edge of the Ice -- The East Coast Plains and Islands -- The East Coast Refugia -- 7. Beringia and the Ice-free Corridor -- Beringia and Its Big Game -- Human Life in Beringia -- The Ice-free Corridor -- Refugia Near the Ice-free Corridor.
Part Three: The Melting of the Ice -- 8. The Ice Begins to Melt -- South of the Ice: Tundra -- South of the Ice: Forest Parkland and Muskeg -- Stagnant Ice -- Superglacial and Ice-walled Lakes and Their Ecology -- 9. The Great Proglacial Lakes -- Glacial Lakes Missoula and Columbia -- Migration from Bergingia -- Glacial Lakes Agassiz and McConnell -- The Precursors of the Great Lakes and Glacial Lake Ojibway -- 10. The Rising Sea -- The Sundering of Beringia -- The Atlantic Shore -- The Atlantic Coastlands -- The champlain Sea -- The Tyrell Sea.
Part Four: The Pleistocene/Holocene Transition -- 11. The End of an Epoch -- The End of the Pleistocene -- The Changing Forest -- The Prairie Grasslands -- Transition in the West: The Interior -- Transition in the West: The Coast -- Beringia at the Turn of the Epoch -- 12. The Great Wave of Extinctions -- Extinction Waves: When, Where, and What -- The Prehistoric Overkill Hypothesis -- The Arguments against Overkill -- Changing Environment Theories -- Extinct Birds -- Part Five: Our Present Epoch, The Holocene -- 13. The Great Warmth -- Some Northward Shifts of Northern Limits -- The Hypsithermal at Sea -- The Hypsithermal in the Mountains -- Refugia from the Drought -- Human Life in the Hypsithermal -- 14. The Neoglaciation -- The Spread of Muskeg -- Increased Rain in the Prairies -- The Shifting Ranges of Forest Tree Species -- The Neoglacial and the Northern Treeline -- Refugia Reestablished -- Respites in the Neoglaciation -- The Little Ice Age -- Epilogue -- Appendix 1: Names of Species: English and Latin -- Appendix 2: Names of Species: Latin and English.
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