By Michelle
Warwicker, BBC Nature
Ancient DNA
shows that bowhead whales bucked the trend to survive the last Ice Age, say
scientists.
The demise of
cold-adapted land mammals such as mammoths has been linked to rising
temperatures around 11,000 years ago.
But
researchers were surprised to find a contrasting population boom for whales
living off the coast of Britain
Their study is
also the first to discover that the ocean giants lived in the southern North Sea .
Dr Andy Foote
from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, based at the University of Copenhagen
"Based on
all previous studies using ancient DNA to estimate the population size... it
seems the trend was for cold-adapted species either [to] go extinct or decline
in numbers at the end of the Ice Age as the temperature increased," said
Dr Foote.
Arctic Britain
But while the
fate of now-extinct land-based Ice Age animals is well documented, little has
been known about how marine animals were affected by the rapid temperature
warming.
Bowhead whales
today are found in Arctic seas and rely on sea ice where they feed on tiny
crustaceans.
The research
team wanted to find out how the whales fared during the rapid climate change of
the Pleistocene-Holocene epoch transition when the essential sea ice retreated
from their North Sea habitat.
Scientists
analysed ancient DNA of partly-fossilised whale remains found in waters between
Britain and Holland
and around Denmark and Sweden
They were able
to use the data to create a habitat prediction model and build a picture of the
whales' past movements and probability of survival.
Read on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/22027533
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