DNA: Commercial whaling has left the bowhead whale vulnerable for many generations to come. A unique collection of prehistoric bowhead whale bones, dating back 11,000 years, reveals a previously untold story of the relative impacts of humans on nature. The time series of ancient fossils show that commercial hunting of bowhead whales, which spanned […]
In the icy waters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a new study reveals how a small population of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) survive the long haul through a surprising strategy: they mate with multiple partners over several years. The combination of long-term genetics, observation and careful analysis is starting to reveal some of the most intimate […]
The hunting of large whales goes back much further in time than previously thought. New research from ICTA-UAB and the Department of Prehistory of the UAB reveals that Indigenous communities in southern Brazil were hunting large cetaceans 5,000 years ago, around a thousand years before the earliest documented evidence from Arctic and North Pacific societies.\ […]