“…Such a delay is plausible in the northeastern US, where year‐round stadial conditions persisted until ~18 ka (Buizert et al, 2014; Lora and Ibarra, 2019). These cold, dry conditions, and the scant vegetation and occurrences of permafrost (Stone and Ashley, 1992) that resulted during the early deglacial period, were primarily controlled by changes in the North Atlantic regional climate (Shuman et al, 2004; Buizert et al, 2014; Osman et al, 2021). We surmise that during this relatively cold period, as much as several thousand years elapsed after the ice margin receded and before the landscape became vegetated enough that organic material, particularly macrofossils, were deposited in lake basin sediment in sufficient numbers to be found in sediment cores.…”