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Human-set fires by a small Polynesian population in New Zealand about 750 years ago may have caused fire-vulnerable forests to shift to shrub land over decades, rather than over centuries, as previously thought.

Researchers have drawn parallels between decline of Assyrian civilization and today's situation in Syria and Iraq. There's more to the decline of the once mighty ancient Assyrian Empire than just civil wars and political unrest. Archaeological, historical, and paleoclimatic evidence suggests that climatic factors and population growth might also have come into play.

Scientists have provided the first systematic examination of the social information polar bears may glean from scent left in the paw prints of other polar bears. The authors also suggest that scent communication in polar bears may be compromised if climate-change driven sea ice losses in the Arctic intensify.

A geologist has demonstrated that earthquakes -- not climate change, as previously thought -- affect the rate of landslides in Peru. "Geologic records of landslide activity offer rare glimpses into landscapes evolving under the influence of tectonics and climate," says a researcher whose expertise includes geomorphology and tectonics. "Because deposits from individual landslides are unlikely to be preserved, it's difficult to reconstruct landslide activity in the geologic past. Therefore, we've developed a method that measures landslide activity before and after the last glacial-interglacial climate transition in Peru."

A mechanism that could turn out to be a big contributor to warming in the Arctic region and melting sea ice has been identified by scientists. They found that open oceans are much less efficient than sea ice when it comes to emitting in the far-infrared region of the spectrum, a previously unknown phenomenon that is likely contributing to the warming of the polar climate.

Heinrich events, in which large masses of icebergs rapidly broke free from ice sheets during the last ice age, are thought to have influenced global climate by interrupting ocean circulation patterns with a large influx of freshwater. However, new research suggests the variations in the height of the ice sheet that happen in these events might also influence global climate.

Last week a bunch of the natural science curators here at the Illinois State Museum presented a poster at a small conference (downloadable PDF here). Normally, a conference poster isn’t a big deal or all that unique, but this may be a first. The theme of this year’s conference was “Taking stock before the connection” and was concerned…

Note: This is the first post in a series focused on a 4-year, National Science Foundation funded project to look at the extinction of Mammoths and Mastodonts in the Midwest.  For the last few years we’ve been traveling…a lot. We started a project in 2011 to better understand 1) when mammoths and mastodonts went extinct,…

A few nights ago, just as I was stumbling to bed, I heard something. It was a distinct fluttering sound–occasionally accented by a light thump. It was something I was able to place, all too well. A bat flying around our bedroom. Resigned to late-night adrenaline, I found an old blanket, wrapped the critter up,…

Note: It is January 2014 and this blog has been sitting stagnant for quite awhile. Over the next few months, I have a number of posts planned. Most are about the paleontology/paleoecology of Ice Age mammals, but I’m planning a few that will focus on methods and documentation–especially for the amateur community. So stay tuned!…

Big mastodon sites have been getting a lot of press lately. In particular, the Snowmass site high up in the Colorado Rockies has produced over 30 mastodons over the course of two field seasons. This site–making national news on a regular basis over the last year–was a pond where the bones of mastodons, mammoths, bison,…

Welcome to my world! This is a research blog about what we do every day at the Illinois State Museum. I am a vertebrate paleontologist who specializes in Ice Age mammals. My research, and much of our museum outreach focuses on the rich record of Quaternary vertebrates in the Midwest and Great Lakes area. Why…