climate change
Not Exactly Rocket Science
Tag archives for climate change
Tiny fungi replay the fall of the giant beasts
Posted by Ed Yong on November 19, 2009 Around 15,000 years ago, North American was home to a wide menagerie of giant mammals – mammoths and mastodons, giant ground sloths, camels, short-faced bears, American lions, dire wolves, and more. But by 10,000 years ago, these “megafauna” had been wiped out. Thirty-four entire genera went extinct, including every species that weighed over a tonne,…
Climate change and the mystery of the shrinking sheep
Posted by Ed Yong on July 2, 2009 The island of Hirta, on the western coast of Scotland, is home to a special breed of sheep. Soay sheep, named after a neighbouring island, are the most primitive breed of domestic sheep and have lived on the isles of St Kilda for at least a millennium. They’re generally smaller than the average domesticated sheep,…
Are emperor penguins marching to extinction?
Posted by Ed Yong on January 28, 2009 The emperor penguin – caring parent, extreme survivor and unwitting movie-star – could be marching to extinction by the turn of the next century. In its Antarctic home, the penguins frequently have to deal with prolonged bouts of starvation, frosty temperatures of -40 degrees Celsius, and biting polar winds that blow at 90 miles per…
Worrying slowdown of coral growth in the Great Barrier Reef
Posted by Ed Yong on January 2, 2009 It’s not a good time for corals. Last year, a third of coral species went straight into the endangered lists after being assessed for the first time, and it looks like 2009 isn’t going to bring any reprieves to the doom and gloom. In particular, a new study provides hard evidence that the mightiest of…
Climate change knocked mammoths down, humans finished them off
Posted by Ed Yong on April 2, 2008 Did our ancestors exterminate the woolly mammoth? Well, sort of. According to a new study, humans only delivered a killing blow to a species that had already been driven to the brink of extinction by changing climates. Corralled into a tiny range by habitat loss, the diminished mammoth population became particularly vulnerable to the spears…