The glaciers that had covered much of North America during the Last Glacial Maximum had retreated substantially, but they had not disappeared.

Sea levels were still substantially lower than they are today — not by the 120 meters of the glacial maximum, but perhaps by 70 to 80 meters, which meant that the Olympic Peninsula’s coastline extended further into what is now the Pacific than it does today.

The Strait of Juan de Fuca, which today separates the Olympic Peninsula from Vancouver Island, may have been a narrower and shallower passage than it is now.

The animals of the late Pleistocene Pacific Northwest included species that exist nowhere on earth today.