The La Brea Tar Pits have preserved animal bones for thousands of years Preserve means to keep as it was originally 4 Introduction
An ice age is a period of millions of years It’s when Earth is really cold Earth is covered with large ice sheets It’s covered with mountain glaciers Glaciers are large bodies of moving ice They thaw and refreeze over time Within an ice age there are many periods of warmer weather Earth is currently in a period of warmth during an ice age The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are still here The last major ice age was during the Pleistocene Epoch Epochs are periods of time This epoch began about 2 6 million years ago It lasted until about 11,700 years ago One of the best sources of information about the Pleistocene Epoch is the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles California 5
Some experts think a comet may have wiped out the large animals A comet is a space object made of ice and dust 6
During this epoch the continents were where they are now The weather was colder and drier Most of the water was ice There was little rain Early humans appeared at the end of the epoch They spread around the world They thrived They became the dominant land animal They hunted large animals These large animals had a hard time during periods of freezing weather Many of these animals became extinct Extinct means no longer found alive 7
