Humans living at the end of the last ice age endured their own version of climate change, one where a harsh, bitterly cold Europe gradually warmed to become the forested continent that exists today.
Humans living at the end of the last ice age endured their own version of climate change, one where a harsh, bitterly cold Europe gradually warmed to become the forested continent that exists today, explains Lawrence Straus, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, during the annual Hallam L. Movius Jr. Lecture at Harvard's Peabody Museum.
Before penguins ruled Antarctica, dinosaurs roamed across what was then a forested continent, migrating over from Australia and other land masses that were connected to it at the time.
Should these tigers have bred successfully, they would not see their offspring shipped to the wild in Asia to repopulate forested areas of that tiger-depleted continent.
Patch Forest pixels comprising small forested areas surrounded by non-forested land cover.
Forest land is divided into forested and non-forested land.
Millions of years ago, our hominid ancestors in Sub-Saharan Africa evidenced the same longing to inhabit the river's edge throughout the mid-continent savannahs, seeking both the verdant riches and shelter of the forested shoreline, perhaps fulfilling some primal desire to return to the familiar forests from which they had earlier emerged.
According to a recent report by New South Wales's Environment Protection Authority, 9% of the Australian continent was forested when the first Europeans stepped ashore in 1788; only 5% remains forested today.
"If greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, Antarctica will head even further back in geologic time…perhaps the peninsula will even become forested again someday, like it was during the greenhouse climates of the Cretaceous and Eocene, when the continent was ice free," DeConto continued by email.
Hardwoods are abundant in forested areas.
