Learn how glaciers grow, shrink, and move, shaping the world around them.

Describes what glaciers are, how they are formed, and how they move and shape the Earth.

"A glacier may look forbidding and empty, but it provides a rich habitat for animals from the mountains to the sea. As the world's glaciers melt, their disappearance impacts not only the wildlife that calls them home, but also all life on earth. Back matter includes a glossary and an author's note about climate change"--

In 1849, a crew building a railroad through Charlotte, Vermont, dug up strange and beautiful bones in a farmer's field. A local naturalist asked Louis Agassiz to help identify them, and the famous scientist concluded that the bones belonged to a beluga whale. But how could a whale's skeleton have been buried so far from the ocean? The answer-that Lake Champlain had once been an arm of the sea-encouraged radical new thinking about geological time scales...