Dnieper Glaciation

the maximal of the glaciations in the East European Plain; it covered a large portion of the plain during the Middle Pleistocene.

The ice of the Dnieper glaciation spread from two centers: the main one, which occupied Scandinavia and Finland, and an additional one, which encompassed the Polar Urals and Novaia Zemlia. In the European USSR the glaciers extended south in two gigantic tongues (the Dnieper and Don tongues). The Dnieper tongue moved across the Dnieper Lowland to the latitude of the present-day city of Dnepropetrovsk (approximately 48°30’N lat), and the Don tongue moved through the Oka-Don plain to the mouth of the Medveditsa River (approximately 49° 35’ N lat). The Central Russian Uplands, which separated both tongues, were partially covered by ice only north of the city of Orel. To the east the southern glacial boundary retreated north along the western slopes of the Volga Uplands and crossed the Urals a little south of 60° N lat. During the Dnieper glaciation (Dnieper glacial period) deposits were formed that are called the Dnieper horizon. The Dnieper glaciation corresponds to the Saale glaciation in Western Europe and the Samarovo glaciation of Western Siberia. Usually it is compared with the Riss glaciation in the Alps, but the Soviet geologist A. I. Moskvitin considers the older Mindelian glaciation in the Alps to be the equivalent of the Dnieper glaciation. Certain Soviet scientists (I. P. Gerasimov, K. K. Markov) also consider the more recent Moscow glaciation as the major stage of the Dnieper glaciation.