75,000 years old: Europe's oldest Arctic animal community discovered in Norway cave
Researchers only recently discovered and explored Arne Ovamgrotta, but the ancient cave has held a significant collection of animal bones for 75,000 years.
Researchers confirmed the finding of 46 different types of animals, hinting at the existence of a large community banding together to weather the cold.
Their remains represent the oldest example of an animal community in the European Arctic during this warmer period of the Ice Age and provide an unprecedented first look at a community struggling, if not failing to survive, climate change.
According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study authors believe the newly discovered bones will feed conservation efforts today by helping researchers understand 'resilience and extinction risk in the present.'
These animals didn't survive the Ice Age
According to study author Dr. Sam Walker of Bournemouth University and the University of Oslo, this 'rare snapshot of a vanished Arctic world' included an impressive, if not astonishing, assemblage of bones.
Among the animals were polar bears, walruses, bowhead whales, Atlantic puffins, common eiders, rock ptarmigans, and Atlantic cod. Additionally, as per a press release, they found collared lemmings, which no one had ever uncovered in Scandavia previously, a species now extinct in Europe.
The massive number communicated to researchers that temperatures had increased significantly enough 75,000 years ago to allow these animals passage to the cave. Reindeer, porpoise, and freshwater fish bones further told researchers that rivers and lakes returned to this area.
'The cave has now revealed a diverse mix of animals in a coastal environment representing both the marine and the terrestrial environment,' according to a press release. A picture of this region on Earth became clearer than ever as remains over 10,000 years old are a rare find. This underexplored period during the Ice Age saw the melting of ice, which was enough to support a struggling community of animals.
Warnings for our future
DNA testing found that these animals did not survive when temperatures dropped back to bone-chilling and fatal degrees. Harsh sheets of ice returned to the region, preventing any possibility of migrating elsewhere, as per Popsci.
'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,' said Dr Walker.
'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,' Dr. Walker continued.
'It is also important to note that this was a shift to a colder, not a period of warming, that we are facing today,' senior author Professor Boessenkool says. '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,' she concludes in a press release.
Read the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Solve the daily Crossword
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Great Barrier Reef records largest annual coral loss in 39 years
Australia Great Barrier Reef MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The Great Barrier Reef has experienced its greatest annual loss of live coral across most of its expanse in four decades of record-keeping, Australian authorities say. But due to increasing coral cover since 2017, the coral deaths — caused mainly by bleaching last year associated with climate change — have left the area of living coral across the iconic reef system close to its long-term average, the Australian Institute of Marine Science said in its annual survey on Wednesday. The change underscores a new level of volatility on the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the report said. Mike Emslie, who heads the tropical marine research agency's long-term monitoring program, said the live coral cover measured in 2024 was the largest recorded in 39 years of surveys. The losses from such a high base of coral cover had partially cushioned the serious climate impacts on the world's largest reef ecosystem, which covers 344,000 square kilometers (133,000 square miles) off the northeast Australian coast, he said. 'These are substantial impacts and evidence that the increasing frequency of coral bleaching is really starting to have detrimental effects on the Great Barrier Reef,' Emslie said on Thursday. 'While there's still a lot of coral cover out there, these are record declines that we have seen in any one year of monitoring,' he added. Emslie's agency divides the Great Barrier Reef, which extends 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) along the Queensland state coast, into three similarly-sized regions: northern, central and southern. Living coral cover shrunk by almost a third in the south in a year, a quarter in the north and by 14% in the central region, the report said. Because of record global heat in 2023 and 2024, the world is still going through its biggest — and fourth ever recorded — mass coral bleaching event on record, with heat stress hurting nearly 84% of the world's coral reef area, including the Great Barrier Reef, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's coral reef watch. So far at least 83 countries have been impacted. This bleaching event started in January 2023 and was declared a global crisis in April 2024. It easily eclipsed the previous biggest global coral bleaching event, from 2014 to 2017, when 68.2% had bleaching from heat stress. Large areas around Australia — but not the Great Barrier Reef — hit the maximum or near maximum of bleaching alert status during this latest event. Australia in March this year started aerial surveys of 281 reefs across the Torres Strait and the entire northern Great Barrier Reef and found widespread coral bleaching. Of the 281 reefs, 78 were more than 30% bleached. Coral has a hard time thriving and at times even surviving in prolonged hot water. They can survive short bursts, but once certain thresholds of weeks and high temperatures are passed, the coral is bleached, which means it turns white because it expels the algae that live in the tissue and give them their colors. Bleached corals are not dead, but they are weaker and more vulnerable to disease. Coral reefs often bounce back from these mass global bleaching events, but often they are not as strong as they were before. Coral reefs are considered a 'unique and threatened system' due to climate change and are especially vulnerable to global warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proclaimed in 2018. The world has now warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. That report said 'tropical corals may be even more vulnerable to climate change than indicated in assessments made in 2014.' The report said back-to-back big bleaching events at the Great Barrier Reef in the mid 2010s 'suggest that the research community may have underestimated climate risks for coral reefs.' 'Warm water (tropical) coral reefs are projected to reach a very high risk of impact at 1.2°C, with most available evidence suggesting that coral-dominated ecosystems will be non-existent at this temperature or higher. At this point, coral abundance will be near zero at many locations,' the report said. ____ Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
Washington Post
an hour ago
- Washington Post
Great Barrier Reef records largest annual coral loss in 39 years
MELBOURNE, Australia — The Great Barrier Reef has experienced its greatest annual loss of live coral across most of its expanse in four decades of record-keeping, Australian authorities say. But due to increasing coral cover since 2017, the coral deaths — caused mainly by bleaching last year associated with climate change — have left the area of living coral across the iconic reef system close to its long-term average, the Australian Institute of Marine Science said in its annual survey on Wednesday.
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Associated Press
Great Barrier Reef records largest annual coral loss in 39 years
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The Great Barrier Reef has experienced its greatest annual loss of live coral across most of its expanse in four decades of record-keeping, Australian authorities say. But due to increasing coral cover since 2017, the coral deaths — caused mainly by bleaching last year associated with climate change — have left the area of living coral across the iconic reef system close to its long-term average, the Australian Institute of Marine Science said in its annual survey on Wednesday. The change underscores a new level of volatility on the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the report said. Mike Emslie, who heads the tropical marine research agency's long-term monitoring program, said the live coral cover measured in 2024 was the largest recorded in 39 years of surveys. The losses from such a high base of coral cover had partially cushioned the serious climate impacts on the world's largest reef ecosystem, which covers 344,000 square kilometers (133,000 square miles) off the northeast Australian coast, he said. 'These are substantial impacts and evidence that the increasing frequency of coral bleaching is really starting to have detrimental effects on the Great Barrier Reef,' Emslie said on Thursday. 'While there's still a lot of coral cover out there, these are record declines that we have seen in any one year of monitoring,' he added. Emslie's agency divides the Great Barrier Reef, which extends 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) along the Queensland state coast, into three similarly-sized regions: northern, central and southern. Living coral cover shrunk by almost a third in the south in a year, a quarter in the north and by 14% in the central region, the report said. Because of record global heat in 2023 and 2024, the world is still going through its biggest — and fourth ever recorded — mass coral bleaching event on record, with heat stress hurting nearly 84% of the world's coral reef area, including the Great Barrier Reef, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's coral reef watch. So far at least 83 countries have been impacted. This bleaching event started in January 2023 and was declared a global crisis in April 2024. It easily eclipsed the previous biggest global coral bleaching event, from 2014 to 2017, when 68.2% had bleaching from heat stress. Large areas around Australia — but not the Great Barrier Reef — hit the maximum or near maximum of bleaching alert status during this latest event. Australia in March this year started aerial surveys of 281 reefs across the Torres Strait and the entire northern Great Barrier Reef and found widespread coral bleaching. Of the 281 reefs, 78 were more than 30% bleached. Coral has a hard time thriving and at times even surviving in prolonged hot water. They can survive short bursts, but once certain thresholds of weeks and high temperatures are passed, the coral is bleached, which means it turns white because it expels the algae that live in the tissue and give them their colors. Bleached corals are not dead, but they are weaker and more vulnerable to disease. Coral reefs often bounce back from these mass global bleaching events, but often they are not as strong as they were before. Coral reefs are considered a 'unique and threatened system' due to climate change and are especially vulnerable to global warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proclaimed in 2018. The world has now warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. That report said 'tropical corals may be even more vulnerable to climate change than indicated in assessments made in 2014.' The report said back-to-back big bleaching events at the Great Barrier Reef in the mid 2010s 'suggest that the research community may have underestimated climate risks for coral reefs.' 'Warm water (tropical) coral reefs are projected to reach a very high risk of impact at 1.2°C, with most available evidence suggesting that coral-dominated ecosystems will be non-existent at this temperature or higher. At this point, coral abundance will be near zero at many locations,' the report said. ____ Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
