ice age

Oxygen Rise Caused Earliest Ice Age

harminka — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:19:37 -0500

An international team of geologists may have uncovered the answer to an age-old question - an ice-age-old question, that is. It appears that Earth's earliest ice age may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which consumed atmospheric greenhouse gases and chilled the earth.

Ice cores map dynamics of sudden climate changes

harminka — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:10:42 -0500

New, extremely detailed data from investigations of ice cores from Greenland show that the climate shifted very suddenly and changed fundamentally during quite few years when the ice age ended.

Glaciers reveal Martian climate has been recently active

harminka — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:43:09 -0500

Brown University researchers have found compelling evidence of thick, recurring glaciers on Mars, a discovery that suggests that the Red Planet’s climate was much more dynamic than previously believed – and could change again. Results are published on the cover of Geology magazine.

Ice Ages and rivers may have affected gorilla diversification

harminka — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 03:07:12 -0600

Geography and historical climate change may have both played a major role in gorilla evolutionary diversification, according to a new genetic study by Cardiff University and the University of New Orleans.

Study reveals lakes major source of prehistoric methane

harminka — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 02:25:06 -0500

A team of scientists led by a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has identified a new likely source of a spike in atmospheric methane coming out of the North during the end of the last ice age.

Antarctic plants and animal life survived ice ages

harminka — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:32:07 -0500

Springtails, mites, worms and plant life could help solve the mystery of Antarctica’s glacial history according to new research published in the journal Science this week.

Carbon dioxide did not end the last Ice Age

harminka — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:25:48 -0500

Carbon dioxide did not cause the end of the last ice age, a new study in Science suggests, contrary to past inferences from ice core records.

Ice Age survivors in Iceland

harminka — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 06:01:51 -0500

Many scientists believe that the ice ages exterminated all life on land and in freshwater in large parts of the Northern Hemisphere, especially on ocean islands such as Iceland.

Ice Age extinction claimed highly carnivorous Alaskan wolves

harminka — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:18:28 -0500

The extinction of many large mammals at the end of the Ice Age may have packed an even bigger punch than scientists have realized. To the list of victims such as woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats, a Smithsonian-led team of scientists has added one more: a highly carnivorous form of wolf that lived in Alaska, north of the ice sheets.

Ancient DNA traces woolly mammoth's disappearance

harminka — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:01:12 -0500

Some ancient-DNA evidence has offered new clues to a very cold case: the disappearance of the last woolly mammoths, one of the most iconic of all Ice Age giants, according to a June 7th report published online in Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press.

Scientists connect climate change, origins of agriculture in Mexico

harminka — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 10:11:30 -0500

New charcoal and plant microfossil evidence from Mexico's Central Balsas valley links a pivotal cultural shift, crop domestication in the New World, to local and regional environmental history. Agriculture in the Balsas valley originated and diversified during the warm, wet, postglacial period following the much cooler and drier climate in the final phases of the last ice age.

Climate swings have brought CO2 pulses from deep sea

harminka — Sat, 12 May 2007 08:42:10 -0500

A study released today provides some of the first solid evidence that warming-induced changes in ocean circulation at the end of the last Ice Age caused vast quantities of ancient carbon dioxide to belch from the deep sea into the atmosphere. Scientists believe the carbon dioxide (CO2) releases helped propel the world into further warming.