Topic description and stories

Tents at Skytrain Ice Rice in Antarctica

Ice cores provide first documentation of rapid Antarctic ice loss in the past

08 Feb 2024

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey have uncovered the first direct evidence that the West Antarctic Ice...

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One of the three Mesolithic deer skull headdresses from the new exhibition

Mysterious 11,000-year-old skull headdresses go on display in Cambridge

21 Jun 2018

Three 11,500-year-old deer skull headdresses – excavated from a world-renowned archaeological site in Yorkshire – will go on display, one for the...

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Subfossil trees preserved in Iceland

Silent witnesses: how an ice age was written in the trees

27 Feb 2018

What connects a series of volcanic eruptions and severe summer cooling with a century of pandemics, human migration and the rise and fall of...

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The fieldwork was conducted during the winter because the frozen lake surface provided the researchers with a solid (but freezing) platform for drilling into the sediment

Textbook story of how humans populated America is “biologically unviable”, study finds

10 Aug 2016

Using ancient DNA, researchers have created a unique picture of how a prehistoric migration route evolved over thousands of years – revealing that it...

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Foraminifera "Star sand" Hatoma Island - Japan

Super-slow circulation allowed world’s oceans to store huge amounts of carbon during the last ice age

27 Jun 2016

The way the ocean transported heat, nutrients and carbon dioxide at the peak of the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, is significantly different...

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Arenal Volcano in November 2006

Increase in volcanic eruptions at the end of the ice age caused by melting ice caps and glacial erosion

02 Feb 2016

Researchers have found that glacial erosion and melting ice caps both played a key role in driving the observed global increase in volcanic activity...

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Foraminifera

Melting of massive ice ‘lid’ resulted in huge release of CO2 at the end of the ice age

04 Jan 2016

A new study of how the structure of the ocean has changed since the end of the last ice age suggest that the melting of a vast ‘lid’ of sea ice...

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DNA was extracted from the molar teeth of this skeleton, dating from almost 10,000 years ago and found in the Kotias Klde rockshelter in Western Georgia.

‘Fourth strand’ of European ancestry originated with hunter-gatherers isolated by Ice Age

16 Nov 2015

Populations of hunter-gatherers weathered Ice Age in apparent isolation in Caucasus mountain region for millennia, later mixing with other ancestral...

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Illustration by Sarah Castor-Perry for 'Where Did Humans Go During the Last Ice Age?'

Big ideas in small packages

20 Mar 2013

A video project demonstrates how academic research can be communicated in an engaging format that puts across complex ideas in a nutshell.

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Tabular iceberg. The production of tabular icebergs is a major mechanism of mass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

1.5 million years of climate history revealed after scientists solve mystery of the deep

10 Aug 2012

Study successfully reconstructed temperature from the deep sea to reveal how global ice volume has varied over the glacial-interglacial cycles of the...

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Leg and torso from the model of a four-legged animal, possibly a deer or horse. This is one of 36 ceramic items recovered from Vela Spila, Croatia.

Archaeologists uncover Palaeolithic ceramic art

24 Jul 2012

Ceramics found on the coast of the Adriatic attest to a hitherto unknown artistic culture which flourished during the last Ice Age, thousands of...

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Deep into the Patagonia Glacier

Ice Age, interrupted

09 Jan 2012

Research shows that a new Ice Age could well have been upon us in the next millennium were it not for increases in CO2 due to humans, despite the...

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