A period of warm climate during the Pleistocene (and earlier glacial epochs) during which continental glaciers retreated to minimum extent. Interglacials have been of approximately 10 000 years durati
on, spaced at approximately 100 000-year intervals over the last 1 000 000 years. The last 10 000 years, or postglacial, is generally considered to be an interglacial.
Generally, an interval of geologic time that was marked by a major poleward retreat of ice. This may be applied to an entire interval between ice ages or (rarely) to the individual "stages" that make
up an interglacial period.
The warm periods between ice age glaciations. Often defined as the periods at which sea levels were close to present sea level. For the Last Interglacial (LIG) this occurred between about 129 and 116
ka (thousand years) before present (defined as 1950) although the warm period started in some areas a few thousand years earlier. In terms of the oxygen isotope record interglaciations are defined as the interval between the midpoint of the preceding termination and the onset of the next glaciation. The present interglaciation, the Holocene, started at 11.65 ka before present although globally sea levels did not approach their present position until about 7 ka before present.