Biologists have used ancient DNA, preserved in fossil bones for millennia, to study the evolution of large species, but now they can employ it to study small animals like lizards and frogs.
Genetic material found in permafrost sediments from the Yukon contains rich information about ancient ecosystems.
(Julius Csotonyi/Government of Yukon)
Ice Age glaciers can help us track the jet stream 12,000 ago, and by comparing its path today we can see how it’s moving northwards, changing weather patterns and indicating climate change.
The Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia. The sheer number of seracs gives the impression that the glacier’s surface is covered in dragon scales.
Olivier Dangles/IRD
Olivier Dangles, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)
The parable of the dragons underlines the need to apprehend glacier disappearance in a transdisciplinary way, to create a dialogue between the physical, ecological and philosophical sciences.
Fossil remains indicate these birds had a wingspan of over 20 feet.
Brian Choo
Paleontologists have discovered fossil remains belonging to an enormous ‘toothed’ bird that lived for a period of about 60 million years after dinosaurs.
A prehistoric woman with a child have left behind the world’s longest trackway.
These findings are in stark contrast with the original worldview that suggested the entire globe was at a maximum glaciated state around 20 000 years ago.
Surface detail of the Tomanowos meteorite, showing cavities produced by dissolution of iron.
Eden, Janine and Jim/Wikipedia
Tomanowos, aka the Willamette Meteorite, may be the world’s most interesting rock. Its story includes catastrophic ice age floods, theft of Native American cultural heritage and plenty of human folly.
A recent cave art discovery in remote Indonesia is changing our understanding of the beginnings of art and the emergence of religious-like thinking in the early human story.
Extinction of the woolly mammoth and other megafauna caused surviving animals to go their separate ways.
Wikimedia
James Renwick, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
For the past two and a half million years, Earth has experienced regular ice ages, but with carbon dioxide levels now over 400 parts per million, the next ice age is postponed for a very long time.