New research reveals significant changes to the circulation of the North Pacific and its impact on the initial migration of humans from Asia to North America. The international study, led by the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and published Dec. 9 in Science Advances, provides a new picture of the circulation and climate of the […]
Most of the large animals that have walked the surface of Earth are no longer here. Why? Dan Mann thinks it’s because our recent climate has been too stable, at least when compared to the wacky ups and downs of the last ice age. Mann, a University of Alaska Fairbanks professor, presented his idea at […]
Image: This mummified ground squirrel, curled up at lower right in its nesting material, lived in Alaska about 20,000 years ago. Photo by Ben Gaglioti One fall day in Interior Alaska, a lion stalked a ground squirrel that stood at attention on a hillside. The squirrel noticed bending blades of grass, squeaked an alarm […]
New dating of rocks and reanalysis of animal bones from islands along the shore of southeastern Alaska suggests that a narrow corridor between the Pacific Ocean and the Cordilleran Ice Sheet (CIS) in Alaska may have enabled the migration of humans to the Americas as early as 17,000 years ago. While the data imply that […]
The blue whale, which uses baleen to filter its prey from ocean water and can reach lengths of over 100 feet, is the largest vertebrate animal that has ever lived. On the list of the planet’s most massive living creatures, the blue whale shares the top ranks with most other species of baleen whales alive […]
Homo sapiens, the ancestor of modern humans, shared the planet with Neanderthals, a close, heavy-set relative that dwelled almost exclusively in Ice-Age Europe, until some 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals were similar to Homo sapiens, with whom they sometimes mated — but they were different, too. Among these many differences, Neanderthals were shorter and stockier, with […]
Sydney — A thigh bone found in China suggests an ancient species of human thought to be long extinct may have survived until as recently as the end of the last Ice Age. The 14,000 year old bone — found among the remains of China’s enigmatic ‘Red Deer Cave people’ — has been shown […]
A study of life and extinctions among woolly mammoths and other ice-age animals suggests that interconnected habitats can help Arctic mammal species survive environmental changes. The study appears online Nov. 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Short periods of warm climate in the midst of the last ice age triggered boom-and-bust cycles in the populations of large mammals in […]
New research confirms that the land under the Chesapeake Bay is sinking rapidly and projects that Washington, D.C., could drop by six or more inches in the next century—adding to the problems of sea-level rise. This falling land will exacerbate the flooding that the nation’s capital faces from rising ocean waters due to a warming […]