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QUESTION Vinicius Rodrigues, Florianopolis, SC
Although it is difficult to determine an exact number, it is known that it occurred about 60 million years ago, in the period known as the Upper Tertiary of the Cenozoic Era.
The ice age peaked 25 million years ago, and temperatures only started to rise approximately 14 million years later. Ice dominated the planet after large meteorites hit the Earth’s surface, kicking up a dense layer of dust that blocked the sun’s rays from reaching Earth. As a result, the planet’s average temperature dropped from 15oC to 10oC, enough variation to eliminate much of the fauna and flora.
Animals that had no difficulty in locomotion survived, such as birds, and species with a large amount of fat in their bodies, such as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers (not by chance, stars of the film franchise The ice Age).
SOURCES: Nature, Discovery and magazine websites School