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 […]