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Friday, March 26. 2010
Climate Change and the Musk Oxen
Musk oxen once were plentiful across the entire Northern Hemisphere, but they now exist almost solely in Greenland and Canada's high Arctic. A dramatic decline in populations began about 12,000 years ago and was often credited to human hunting patterns. However a new study, by international scientists, suggests that the decline was due to a warming climate rather than to human hunting. This is the first study to use ancient musk oxen DNA collected from across the animal's former geographic range to test for human impacts on musk oxen populations. The late Pleistocene period was marked by rapid environmental change as well as the beginning of the spread of humans across the Northern Hemisphere. The team has studied the genetic diversity and population decline of a number of species and concludes that because of the wide-ranging fluctuations between species,
changes in the arctic environment are much more likely to account for fluctuations in populations as each species will adapt to climate changes in different ways.
For more information on this study please click here.
Interested in seeing musk oxen? Head to the Arctic one of our three Arctic Expeditions:
Arctic Quest
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