The Würm glaciation ( or Würm-Glazial or Würm stage, colloquially often also Würmeiszeit oder Würmzeit; c.f. ice age), in the literature usually just referred to as the Würm, often spelt "Wurm", is the name given to the last glacial period in the Alpine region. It is the youngest of the major glaciations of the region that extended beyond the Alps themselves. It is, like most of the other ice ages of the Pleistocene epoch, named after a river, the Würm in Bavaria, a tributary of the Amper. The Würm ice age can be dated to the time about 115,000 to 10,000 years ago, the sources differing depending on whether the long transition phases between the glacials and interglacials  (warmer periods) are allocated to one or other of these periods. The average annual temperatures during the Würm ice age in the Alpine Foreland were below -3 °C (today +7 °C). This has been determined from changes in the vegetation (pollen analysis) as well as differences in the facies.