New findings from the La Brea Tar Pits in southern California suggest human-caused wildfires in the region, along with a warming climate, led to the loss of most of the area’s large mammals.
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Articles on Pleistocene
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The ancestors of kangaroos once lived in the trees – but their evolutionary history is murky. Here’s everything we know so far.
Ancient microbes likely produced natural products their descendants today do not. Tapping into this lost chemical diversity could offer a potential source of new drugs.
What climate changes in the distant past can tell us about the near future.
The ancient cave paintings have only begun to tell us about the lives of the earliest people who lived in Australasia. The art is disappearing just as we are beginning to understand its significance.
It appears that the South African Cape south coast’s dunes and beaches formed a vast canvas of sand on which our ancestors could leave their mark.
Several theories have suggested either humans, climate change or both drove megafauna extinctions in Southeast Asia. Our newest work suggests otherwise.
One avian track, probably made by a large gull or a small goose, was found in sediments that have been dated to about 400,000 years. That makes it the oldest avian track reported from southern Africa.
The historical record is full of surprises – and it could encourage conservationists to think more creatively.
Overhunting of megafauna such as mammoths may have force us to take up farming, ultimately leading to modern society
The rise and fall of monkeys in ancient Europe should remind us of our own species’ precarious relationship with changing climates.
Given that we know humans moved across these landscapes, we wondered whether there might also be evidence of other forms of human activity on these surfaces of sand.
The Indian summer monsoon rainfall affects the lives of over a billion people. By looking at how prehistoric climate changes affected it, scientists can contribute to its future prediction.
A 20-year-old experiment is testing whether filling the Arctic tundra with animals could keep carbon trapped in the ground.
Fossils of a whale thought to be found only in southern waters have been discovered at two sites in the northern hemisphere.
A team of archaeologists strived to improve the reproducibility of their results, influencing their choices in the field, in the lab and during data analysis.
Large birds once lived across Australia, only to become extinct around the time that giant marsupials and other megafauna died out during the Pleistocene “ice ages”.
Top contributors
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Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University
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Professor, Flinders University
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Senior Lecturer, Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle
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Curator Vertebrates, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
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Postdoctoral Researcher in Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
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Researcher, Flinders University
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PhD Candidate in Archaeology, Griffith University
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Senior Curator, Vertebrate Palaeontology, Museums Victoria Research Institute
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Professor, University of Wollongong
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Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University
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Associate Professor, Vertebrate Palaeontology Group, Flinders University
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Professor of Climate Science, University of Bristol
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Senior Lecturer in Ocean Biogeochemistry, The Open University
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Professor of Bioorganic Chemistry and Paleobiotechnology, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
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Associate Professor of Archaeology, University of Washington
