Tag: Siberia
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Miners Unearth a Mummified Woolly Rhino in Siberia, With an Intact Horn and Soft Tissue
Smithsonian Magazine has an article about the discovery of a mummified woolly rhinoceros in Siberia. The animal was found by gold miners earlier this summer in a quarry in the rural Oymyakonsky District of Russia. It’s very well preserved with soft tissue and a complete horn. Some scientists have speculated that ancient DNA might even…
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The Last Stand of the Woolly Mammoths
Mammoths remained on Wrangel Island, about 80 miles from the Siberian coast, for about 6,000 years after they vanished from the rest of Asia, Europe and North America.Credit…Beth Zaiken Carl Zimmer has an article about the last of the Woolly Mammoths over on the New York Times. A small population of mammoths on Wrangel Island…
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A New Company With a Wild Mission: Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth
The New York Times has a story about a company that wants to bring back the Woolly Mammoth. The resurrection of extinct species has been discussed for a while now. And now a company named Colossal has raised $15 million dollars in funding to bring the Woolly Mammoth back to Siberia. A team of scientists…
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NYT: Burning Fossil Fuels Helped Drive Earth’s Most Massive Extinction
The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about the Permian Mass Extinction event. A paper published in the journal Geology adds more evidence to the theory that this mass extinction was driven by volcanic eruptions through ancient oil and coal deposits in Siberia. The study looked at chemical traces in the rocks in…
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The Epic Siberian Journey to Solve a Mass Extinction Mystery
Wired has an article about research into the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event, which happened about 250 million years ago. Sometimes called “The Great Dying”, this event, which was really a series of events, took out about 70% of land species and more than 95% of marine species. The current theory about its cause is a runaway…
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NYT: The Planet Has Seen Sudden Warming Before. It Wiped Out Almost Everything
The New Your Times has a good article about the Permian Mass Extinction on Carl Zimmer’s Matter blog. The story is in response to a new study published in Science. No real surprises as climate change was the driving force. And we may be repeating the process, the scientists warn. If so, then climate change…
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Humans Today Have Even More Neanderthal DNA Than We Realised
George Dvorsky Oct 6, 2017, 6:00pm Before this new study, only four Neanderthal specimens have had their genomes sequenced. Of these, only one — an Altai Neanderthal found in Siberia — was of sufficient quality, where scientists were able to accurately flag variations in the genome. The new analysis, enabled by a remarkably well-preserved genome…
