Anglian stage

St Andrew's Church, Hornchurch, the furthest location south reached by a Pleistocene ice sheet in Britain

The Anglian Stage is the name used in the British Isles for a middle Pleistocene glaciation. It precedes the Hoxnian Stage and follows the Cromerian Stage in the British Isles. The Anglian Stage is equivalent to the Elsterian Stage of northern Continental Europe, the Mindel Stage in the Alps and Marine Isotope Stage 12. The Anglian Stage and Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage 12 started about 478,000 years ago and ended about 424,000 years ago.

The Anglian was the most extreme ice age during the last 2 million years. In Britain the ice sheet reached Hornchurch in north-east London, the furthest south the ice reached in any Pleistocene ice age. It diverted the River Thames from its old course through the Vale of St Albans south to its present position.

This stage had been equated to the Kansan Stage in North America. However, the terms Kansan Stage, along with Yarmouth, Nebraskan, and Aftonian stages, have been abandoned by North American Quaternary geologists and merged into the Pre-Illinoian stage. The Anglian Stage is now correlated with the period of time which includes the Pre-Illinoian B glaciation of North America.

See also

• Glacial period
• Last glacial period

External links

• (Includes PDF file of map)
• Shotton, F.W., nd, East Anglia and the English Midlands. Ice Age Britain., The Shotton Project, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, England.