Barents-Kara Ice Sheet

The Barents - Kara Ice Sheet was a massive ice sheet in northern Russia, the largest expansion in the Vistula ice age was about 90,000 years ago. At that time the ice sheet covered the Pechora Sea, the southeastern part of the Barents Sea, the twin island Novaya Zemlya, the Kara Sea in the north and reached possibly to Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land. On the mainland, the area was from the northern Russian lowlands to the North Siberian Lowland, also under the ice sheet.

In later phases of ice advance in the Weichseleiszeit it reached probably not the Russian mainland, while the Fennoscandian ice sheet covered the west ever larger areas and about 20,000 years ago reached its maximum.

It is assumed that the ice sheet to drain large Russian rivers ( Pechora, Ob and Yenisei ) prevented in the Arctic Ocean and several lakes on defrosted itself. There is even the suggestion that the West Siberian Plain, a flat, huge lake could have originated, who drained into the Aral Sea or the Caspian Sea.