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Articles on Pleistocene

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The fossil deposits at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles have well-preserved remains of many prehistoric animals that got stuck in natural asphalt seeps over the past 60,000 years. Cullen Townsend, courtesy of NHMLAC

A changing climate, growing human populations and widespread fires contributed to the last major extinction event − can we prevent another?

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.
Ancient DNA preserved in the tooth tartar of human fossils encodes microbial metabolites that could be the next antibiotic. Werner/Siemens Foundation

Reconstructing ancient bacterial genomes can revive previously unknown molecules – offering a potential source for new antibiotics

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.
This Warty Pig is part of a panel dated to more than 45,500 years in age. Basran Burhan/Griffith University

How climate change is erasing the world’s oldest rock art

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.
These fossil trackways resemble the tracks left by flamingos today, but are bigger. Just above the scale bar one can see (more faintly) the ‘tramline traces’ made by the ancient birds’ stomping action. Charles Helm

Fossil tracks reveal which birds once roamed South Africa’s Cape south coast

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.
A rock surface containing a circular pattern with a central depression. The scale bar = 10 cm. Images modified from: Helm, C.W.; Cawthra, H.C.; De Vynck, J.C.; Helm, C.J.; Rust, R.; Stear. W. Patterns in the Sand: A Pleistocene hominin signature along the South African coastline? Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association (2019)

Ancient humans may have made patterns and sculptures on South Africa’s beaches

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.
Hypothetical reconstruction of the largest extinct megapode, Progura gallinacea (right), with a modern Brush-turkey and a Grey Kangaroo. Artwork by E. Shute, from photos by Tony Rudd, Kim Benson and Aaron Camens

Tall turkeys and nuggety chickens: large ‘megapode’ birds once lived across Australia

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”.

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