Discovery in Arctic cave provides a ‘rare snapshot of a vanished world'
Forty-six types of mammals were found, as well as fish and birds.
The discovery, which includes polar bear, walrus, bowhead whale and Atlantic puffin, provides 'a rare snapshot of a vanished Arctic world', according to scientists.
Also found were the remains of collared lemmings which are now extinct in Europe and had not been found in Scandinavia before.
The team say the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), will help show how wildlife has responded to dramatic climate shifts in the past as the animal community dates to a warmer period of the ice age.
DNA testing carried out for the research found that the lineages of the animals did not survive when colder conditions returned.
Sam Walker, of Bournemouth University, said: 'These discoveries provide a rare snapshot of a vanished Arctic world.
'They also underscore how vulnerable cold-adapted species can be under changing climate conditions, which can help us to understand their resilience and extinction risk in the present.'
The remains were found in the Arne Qvamgrotta cave which was first discovered in the 1990s when a local mining industry built a tunnel through the nearby mountain.
But it was large excavations carried out in 2021 and 2022 which led to the discovery of the animals which also included common eider, rock ptarmigan and Atlantic cod.
Professor Sanne Boessenkool, of the University of Oslo, said: 'We have very little evidence of what Arctic life was like in this period because of the lack of preserved remains over 10,000 years old.
'The cave has now revealed a diverse mix of animals in a coastal ecosystem representing both the marine and the terrestrial environment.'
The researchers state that the variety of animals including migratory reindeer suggest the habitat would have been mostly ice-free at the time and the presence of freshwater fish meant there would have been lakes and rivers within tundra.
There would also have been sea ice for the bowhead whales and walruses, although this would have been seasonal as the harbour porpoises found are known to avoid ice, the scientists say.
The study suggests that although the animals had managed to colonise the region after the glaciers melted, their whole populations had died out as they had been unable to migrate when the ice returned.
Dr Walker said: 'This highlights how cold-adapted species struggle to adapt to major climatic events.
'This has a direct link to the challenges they are facing in the Arctic today as the climate warms at a rapid pace.
'The habitats these animals in the region live in today are much more fractured than 75,000 years ago, so it is even harder for animal populations to move and adapt.'
Prof Boessenkool added: 'It is also important to note that this was a shift to a colder, not a period of warming that we are facing today.
'And these are cold-adapted species, so if they struggled to cope with colder periods in the past, it will be even harder for these species to adapt to a warming climate.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Alien: Earth – Ridley Scott's terrifying space monster finally comes to TV … and it's properly creepy
'I am human, and nothing human is alien to me,' wrote Roman playwright Terence in 165BC. He hadn't seen any of the Alien films, though. He hadn't seen Alien or Aliens or Alien 3 , he hadn't seen any of the Predator crossover canon, he hadn't seen Resurrection or Prometheus or the one after Prometheus. He hadn't even seen Alien: Romulus, even though it's named after the guy who co-founded Rome. The Oscar-winning franchise has earned well over a billion dollars worldwide. There's nothing more human than loving Alien. Part of the franchise's success is its malleability. A creature-horror stuffed with Freudian nightmare, the films blend action, sci-fi, theology and satire. (I don't want to be Frankenstein's Pedant about it, but the monster is the profit-driven corporation determined to bring the alien to Earth to develop as a biological weapon.) Now that the IP belongs to Disney, we should expect many more instalments. But can they keep stretching the story into exciting shapes? Or are the days of Alien: Below Decks or The Real Housewives of Moon LV-426 upon us? Thankfully, they've given control of Alien: Earth (Disney+, from Wednesday 12 August) to writer-director Noah Hawley, the TV genius responsible for Fargo and the dazzlingly ambitious Marvel series Legion. He takes us back a few years before the start of the first film, to an Earth run by a consortium of five tech companies. A deep space research vessel belonging to Weyland-Yutani, AKA Baddy Corp, crash-lands into a building owned by rival Prodigy. Guess what – there's a very, very bad dog on board, and the Jurassic ovoids being transported? Not Kinder Eggs. The Alien movies' main creature, the xenomorph, remains mesmerising. Rather than making an eight-hour slasher movie, Hawley uses its threat to explore a story about identity, the limits of AI and human weakness. An intriguing character is Boy Kavalier, the founder of Prodigy. To capture Weyland-Yutani's extraterrestrial IP, he sends a party of his new creations: Hybrids. We see him secretly transferring the consciousness of terminally ill children into synthetic bodies, with tremendous strength and upgradable minds. Thank God our tech leaders are more responsible! This is one of my favourite tropes: evil genius motivated by lonely boredom. Boy Kavalier, who resembles Richard Hammond in a Bob Dylan wig, has created a new species simply because he wants someone to have an interesting conversation with. No one gets him. There is a twisted romance to that idea, if far-fetched. I mean, what does Elon Musk want? Someone to laugh at his jokes? Maybe that's the same thing. The Hybrids are a great creation. Watching them, I was reminded of The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds. That documentary showed us infants playing, tracing the growth of recognisably adult behaviour. Kavalier's prototypes kill and jump off cliffs, charged by lithium batteries that would power a city. Yet in the aftermath they are confused, worried about getting in trouble. They're super-soldiers with the emotional age of children. Is there a current of identification between Hybrid and xenomorph? Is our enemy's enemy our friend – or just another enemy? Do humans deserve to survive? The series plays with big questions. Yet this isn't The Rest Is Aliens, a podcast about industrial espionage and existentialism. Its chief ambition is ramping up dread. And blood. Every episode is, frankly, an abattoir. New aliens have been designed that are blood-curdlingly creepy. The show boasts the sound design of the year, with chitinous clacking and background monkey whoops stoking constant unease. Even the casting is creepy, from child-adult Hybrids to Timothy Olyphant as an inscrutable robot scientist. Adrian Edmondson from The Young Ones is in it – yet so unrecognisable that I still don't know he's in it. Alien: Earth adds freshness to the franchise's convoluted lore – give it your eyeballs. Tasting notes include Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Westworld, Un Chien Andalou, plus The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds. There's also the most cinematic monster to ever do it, doing it plenty. If that isn't entertainment enough, then you truly are unknowable.
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
What you should really do if wasps gatecrash your picnic
By The warm summer months mean sunny days, family picnics and, inevitably, wasps. The uninvited guests usually prompt chaos at otherwise wholesome outings. Now, experts have revealed what you should really do if a wasp gatecrashes your picnic or al-fresco dinner. And the worst way you can react, they say, is by running away. Seirian Sumner, a professor of Behavioural Ecology at University College London , warned if you start flapping and shouting, you are behaving like a predator. 'This might trigger the wasp's attack mode,' she wrote on The Conversation. 'Keep your mouth closed and avoid breathing heavily to minimise the release of carbon dioxide, which wasps use as a cue that a predator is attacking.' But what, then, should we do? The wasps that usually visit your picnic are typically the common yellowjacket and the German wasp, she said. They will be worker wasps, who are always female, and will be looking for food to feed their sibling larvae. The best way to keep them from bothering you is to provide a 'wasp offering', Professor Sumner explained. 'Is she carving off a lump of ham, gathering a dollop or jam or slurping at your sugary drink?' she said. 'Watch what she is eating because this gives you a clue to what your wasp offering will be.' Your offering should be a portion of whatever she harvested from your plate, and it can be moved slightly away from the rest of your food. 'If you let her have her share, you too can dine in peace,' Professor Sumner explained. 'You can gradually move your wasp offering further away from you.' Keeping an eye on the wasps' feeding habits can also help you work out what is going on inside her colony. If the wasp wants ham, or some other kind of protein, you know her colony is full of hungry larvae, Dr Sumner said. This usually occurs around mid-to-late August. Meanwhile if the wasp is fixated on sugar at the table, such as jam or fizzy drinks, you know her colony is likely to be in its 'twilight' phase of life. 'A lot of us have been taught to fear wasps as aggressive insects that exist only to make our lives a misery,' Professor Sumner said. 'But with unsustainable wildlife loss across the planet, we need to learn to live alongside all organisms – even wasps. They are important pollinators and predators of insects. 'A little knowledge about their natural history can help you dine safely alongside wasps.' Last month, a pest control expert warned wasps are attacking earlier than normal this year thanks to recent balmy weather. Usually, the insects are most aggressive in late autumn.
Metro
6 hours ago
- Metro
The woolly mammoth and a 30ft sea cow could all soon be back from the dead
If all goes to plan, Ben Lamm's next Christmas card to his friends will be of him posing with a woolly mammoth and a dodo. Lamm, 43, is the billionaire entrepreneur who founded Colossal Biosciences, a genetic engineering company, in 2021. What the company hopes to do is certainly colossal – working to resurrect extinct species, a process called de-extinction. The idea, Lamm told Metro, came during a call about human-based biology with George Church, a biologist at Harvard Medical School. 'By the way, I'm working to bring back mammoths and other extinct species to reintroduce them back into the Arctic and regenerate the ecosystem. But I have to go now. Goodbye,' Lamm recalled of the call. 'I had just heard the greatest thing ever, and then the call was over. I stayed up all night reading articles and listening to interviews about all these things.' Scientists have long dreamed of reviving extinct species. But earlier this year, Colossal researchers helped bring the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by Game of Thrones, back from the dead. Kind of. Scientists salvaged DNA from the fossils of dire wolves and edited 20 of their genes into their closest living relatives, grey wolves. (Think Jurassic Park just without the maniacal computer-network engineer.) After creating embryos and implanting them in surrogates, three pups were born: Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi. The pups, with their dense, pale coats, were the first successful case of de-extinction, Colossal said. SOUND ON. You're hearing the first howl of a dire wolf in over 10,000 years. Meet Romulus and Remus—the world's first de-extinct animals, born on October 1, dire wolf has been extinct for over 10,000 years. These two wolves were brought back from extinction using… — Colossal Biosciences® (@colossal) April 7, 2025 Now, Colossal wants to revive the woolly mammoth by giving elephants dense hair and thick fat, and reintroducing them to the Siberian tundra. Lamm said that his team are also 'exclusively focused' on two other extinct creatures: the Tasmanian tiger and the 12-foot-tall bird called Moa, though they haven't cracked how to insert edited genes into eggs yet. 'I'd personally love to bring back the Steller's sea cow,' Lamm said, referring to the extinct, 30-foot-long relative of the manatee, 'but there is nothing to gestate it in until we have artificial wombs working.' Inventing an undo button for extinction sounds like a sci-fi film, but Lamm's reasons for doing it are very much real. Many of the de-extinction candidates were eradicated by humans: The dodo was, well, as dead as a dodo by 1662 after people colonised Mauritius. The Tasmanian tiger was similarly wiped out after European settlers relentlessly hunted the striped marsupials in the 1800s, while the sea cow was wiped out by humans within 27 years of its discovery. Climate change threatens to make even more species vanish, and wildlife populations have already plummeted by 70%. 'Habitats around the planet are changing at a pace that is faster than evolution by natural selection can keep up,' explained Lamm. 'For many species, there is not enough time.' We're launching the Colossal Species Reintroduction Fund: $250K annually to help return missing and at-risk species to the wild. Rewilding restores ecosystems and helps prevent extinctions. This is one more step toward making extinction a thing of the past. — Colossal Biosciences® (@colossal) August 5, 2025 Is de-exctinction, with the power of pipettes and computers, possible? Experts told Metro they aren't so sure. For one, the dire wolves Colossal brought back can be better described as modified grey wolves, said Benjamin Tapon, a PhD student at Queen Mary's School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences. 'By any practical definition of a species, no animal that Colossal has genetically engineered so far is anywhere near the extinct animal they are trying to emulate,' he said. 'Colossal is doing the equivalent of rebuilding the Library of Alexandria by printing PDFs of a few books and adding them to the shelves of the local public library.' As much as dire wolves and grey wolves share 99.5% of their DNA code, Tapon said, people and bananas share 60% of genes. 'It's a bit like saying that Romeo and Juliet shares 99% of its words with 50 Shades of Grey, or a book in another language,' he added. Alex de Mendoza, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary's Centre for Epigenetics, said Game of Thrones and Colossal got a big thing wrong about the dire wolf – they probably weren't white. The wolves lived in arid conditions, not the tundra, de Mendoza said, so they were probably a red-ish brown, adding: 'The habitat they once roamed on is no longer here. 'Most species extinctions these days occur due to habitat loss. If we couldn't preserve their habitat while they were still alive, why should we bring them back?' Capon wonders whether developing the technology to resurrect long-dead creatures could make people less diligent at preventing extinction. 'If we bring them back, will they be zoo attractions?' he said. As controversial as de-extinction is, both Capon and de Mendoza understand where Lamm is coming from. Capon would love a pet dodo, 'just not enough to try to bring them back.' More Trending De Mendoza said he would de-extinct the Tasmanian tiger: 'It is so frustrating that this wonderful animal disappeared in the 1930s. 'I think there's still habitat for it to survive, as long as people don't kill it… That said, my hopes for seeing a Tasmanian tiger come back from extinction and not just a kangaroo with some stripes are rather low.' Lamm understands where his critics are coming from, too. Which animals Colossal hopes to de-extinct take into account whether they'd have a positive impact on the environment or help conservation efforts. 'If bringing back the species can also inspire the next generation,' he added, 'then that is just another bonus.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: I went inside the Navy's secret battlespace barely anyone knows about MORE: I discovered the murky world of 'minor attracted people' – it's even more disturbing than you think MORE: Moment huge black bear is chased out of home by tiny Pomeranian dog
