On Jacquelyn Gill’s first day doing field work at the Siberian permafrost caves during the summer of 2018, a local fossil hunter approached her with a dead bird in his hands. The translator hadn’t yet arrived, but from the freshly dead look of the bird, Gill assumed it had just recently flown into the cave and died. A modern bird was of little interest to her team, which had flown to this remote region and trekked for miles to study remnants of the last ice age. The man, however, was persistent in offering her the dead bird.
Finally, the translator showed up and revealed what the fossil hunter was trying to tell Gill: The bird was ancient, one of the first frozen bird carcasses ever found in a late Pleistocene permafrost deposit.
“This is an ice age traveller, and I can touch it,” Gill, an assistant professor in climate science at the University of Maine, told Gizmodo.
In the boreal forest 30 kilometres east of the remote town of Belaya Gora in Siberia, north of the Arctic Circle, the international ban on the ivory trade has driven fossil hunters to blast a network of tunnels into the permafrost using firehoses, looking for preserved mammoth tusks and rhino horns. But the legal ancient ivory trade doesn’t just uncover bones; it has revealed a wealth of palaeontological treasures from a frigid era, from mammoths to ancient horses to the entire, shaggy head of an extinct wolf. This week, scientists have published a description of the bird – an approximately 46,000-year-old female horned lark, a bird still common across the Northern Hemisphere today – telling the story of a vastly different ecosystem from the one where the fossil hunters dig today.
Where scientists found the carcass (Graphic: Dussex et al/Nature Communications Biology (2020))
Prior to Gill’s visit, the fossil hunters, who are legally permitted to dig the tunnels, invited researchers to come see the wealth of finds they’d uncovered. One of the hunters had found the bird 150 metres into a tunnel, around 7 metres underground. Scientists brought the bird back to a labin the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, Sweden, where they carbon-dated the specimen, determining its age based on the ratio of radioactive carbon molecules in its tissue, and sequenced its genome. They, too, were shocked by how well-preserved the sample was.
“We’re talking about a very fragile specimen,” Nicolas Dussex, the study’s first author from the Centre for Palaeogenetics, told Gizmodo. Anything could have crushed the hollow-boned carcass over the millennia, and yet it remained pristine. “We could even look at the contents of its stomach if we had the chance. It’s like entering a walk-in freezer and finding a thing that’s been stored for 45,000 years.”
Knowing the identity of the bird can tell us about the environment of ancient Siberia. Today, horned larks are notable for their love of vast, open habitats – they frequent cleared agricultural fields, beaches, and airports. The bird’s presence falls in line with other finds in the caves, like bison, horses, and mammoths, suggesting that this region was covered by a mixture of tundra and steppe habitats all those years ago, according to the paper published in the journal Nature Communications Biology.
“There’s been an incredible ecosystem change since the last glacial period,” Gill told Gizmodo. The lost habitat goes hand-in-hand with the lost species; as the last ice age came to an end and the large mammals found in the cave died out, the area lost its large grazers, which had provided important ecosystem services that maintained the region. The change of the ecosystem would have contributed to further species extinctions.
A horned lark on a defunct airport runway in NYC. (Photo: Ryan F. Mandelbaum)
But the horned lark survived the region’s transformation. The genetic analysis placed the bird as an ancestor of two surviving horned lark subspecies, one that lives in Scandinavia and Northern Russia and another that inhabits the arid lands of Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and China. Perhaps this bird was a direct ancestor of both. “It doesn’t have to be a rare species to be exciting. The fact that it survived the challenges of climate change commands a lot of respect,” Gill said.
Thinking about the stories of survival through the end of the last ice age can have equal importance to ecologists today. “Comparing the Ice Age horned lark with its great grandbaby larks can tell us something about the through-line and help us get a better handle on who survives and why, and how we can maybe help species out as they go into this accelerated rate of climate change,” Gill said.
The scientists will continue studying this specimen, hoping to learn how horned larks accumulated mutations in their DNA over time, in order to understand evolution more generally. And given the demand for ancient ivory, there will certainly be more finds where this came from.
Featured image: Dussex et al (Nature Communications Biology (2020))
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
