Paleoclimatology News

Ancient Sumer’s Rise Was Driven by Interplay of Rivers and Tides, Archaeologists Say

The impression of a cylinder seal from the Uruk period, around 3100 BCE. Image credit: Louvre Museum.
Sep 2, 2025 by News Staff

New research introduces a paleoenvironmental model in which tidal dynamics influenced the earliest development of agriculture and sociopolitical complexity in Sumer. The impression of a cylinder seal from the Uruk period, around 3100 BCE. Image credit: Louvre Museum. The earliest network of city-states, closely knit by shared cultural traditions and economic interests, emerged around 5,000 years ago in southern Mesopotamia. Collectively referred to...

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Primates historically transitioned across diverse climates: (A) transition between the temperate (top), arid (left), tropical (bottom), and cold (right), main climates, for all primates; arrow size represents the proportion of phylogenetic branches with the respective transitions; (B) climatic transitions for early primates, who were living between 65 and 47.8 million years ago; (C) climatic transitions for species that were living between 47.8 and 23.03 million years ago; (D) climatic transitions for species that were living from 23.03 million years ago to the present. Image credit: Avaria-Llautureo et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2423833122.

Early Primates Primarily Inhabited Cold and Temperate Climates, New Study Suggests

Aug 12, 2025 by News Staff

Textbooks often portray primates as originating, evolving, and dispersing exclusively within warm tropical forests. This tends to come from fossil evidence...

Markowska et al. show recurrent humid intervals in the central Arabian interior over the past 8 million years. Image credit: Paul Breeze.

Saharo-Arabian Desert Was Regularly Lush and Green Over Period of 8 Million Years: Study

Apr 9, 2025 by News Staff

The Saharo-Arabian Desert is one of the largest biogeographical barriers on Earth, impeding dispersals between Africa and Eurasia, including movements...

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, originating in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, is a defining mode of interannual climate variability with profound impact on global climate and ecosystems. Image credit: Li et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2404758121.

El Nino-Southern Oscillation is At Least 250 Million Years Old, New Study Suggests

Oct 24, 2024 by News Staff

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which is characterized by irregular alternations between anomalously warm (El Niño) and cold (La Niña) conditions,...

A geological field section reveals a desiccated (extreme dryness) land surface that was common all over the world 252 million years ago. Image credit: University of Bristol / China University of Geosciences.

Mega El Niño Events Caused End-Permian Mass Extinction, Researchers Suggest

Sep 16, 2024 by News Staff

The end-Permian mass extinction, which occurred about 252 million years ago, was the most severe extinction event in the past 540 million years, eliminating...

The occasional use of stone tools as ‘strike-a-lights’ was a technocultural feature shared among Neanderthals in France.

Extreme Glacial Cooling Caused Extinction of Early Pleistocene Hominins in Europe, Study Says

Aug 10, 2023 by News Staff

New paleoclimate evidence shows that around 1.1 million years ago, the southern European climate cooled significantly and caused an extinction of archaic...

An artist’s impression of how astronomical forces affect the Earth’s motion, climate, and ice sheets. Image credit: NAOJ.

Astronomical Forcings Shaped Timing of Glacial Cycles during Early Pleistocene, Study Says

May 15, 2023 by News Staff

Glacial cycles during the Early Pleistocene epoch are characterized by a dominant 41,000-year periodicity and amplitudes smaller than those of glacial...

Giesche et al. aimed to reconstruct indications of both the winter and summer rainy seasons from their multi-proxy time series and evaluate the impact these changes may have had on the Indus Civilization. Image credit: Giesche et al., doi: 10.1038/s43247-023-00763-z.

Recurring Summer and Winter Droughts Led to Demise of Bronze Age Indus Civilization

Apr 27, 2023 by News Staff

In new research, scientists from the University of Cambridge and elsewhere reconstructed changes in summer and winter rainfall from trace elements and...

Kuitems et al. provide evidence that the Norse were active on the North American continent in the year 1021 CE. Image credit: Oscar C.R.

Vikings Abandoned Southwest Greenland Due in Part to Sea-Level Rise, New Research Suggests

Apr 18, 2023 by News Staff

The first records of Greenland Vikings date to 985 CE. Archaeological evidence yields insight into how they lived, yet drivers of their disappearance in...

Top: map of South Africa with the location of Ga-Mohana Hill (GHN); inset map shows the approximate extent of the Kalahari Basin in southern Africa and the location of the region of interest in relation to it. Bottom: representative photographs of each of the tufa morphologies identified on the Ga-Mohana hillside. Image credit: von der Meden et al., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270104.

Ancient Humans Lived in Kalahari Desert More Than 20,000 Years Ago

Aug 18, 2022 by News Staff

Detailed, well-dated palaeoclimate and archaeological records are critical for understanding the impact of environmental change on human evolution. In...

Kuitems et al. provide evidence that the Norse were active on the North American continent in the year 1021 CE. Image credit: Oscar C.R.

Increasingly Dry Conditions Contributed to Norse Abandonment of Southern Greenland, Study Shows

Mar 23, 2022 by News Staff

Declining temperature has been thought to explain the abandonment of Norse settlements in southern Greenland in the early 15th century CE, although limited...

Tang Dynasty mural commemorating the victory of General Zhang Yichao over the Tibetans in 848 CE, from Mogao cave 156.

Volcanic Eruptions Contributed to Repeated Collapse of Ancient Chinese Dynasties, Says New Study

Nov 12, 2021 by News Staff

One or more volcanic eruptions preceded the majority (62 of 68) of dynastic collapses in China over the past 2,000 years, according to new research led...

An artist’s impression of the Hadean Earth: huge, impact-generated lava lakes coexisted with surface liquid water, under a thick greenhouse atmosphere sustained by lava outgassing. Image credit: Simone Marchi & Dan Durda, Southwest Research Institute.

Extreme Heat Led to Episodic Deluges on Ancient ‘Hothouse’ Earth, Scientists Say

Nov 4, 2021 by News Staff

The distant past of Earth and potentially its future include extremely warm ‘hothouse’ climate states, but little is known about how the atmosphere...

Reconstruction of the West Antarctic mid-Cretaceous temperate rainforest. The painting is based on paleofloral and environmental information inferred from palynological, geochemical, sedimentological and organic biomarker data obtained from cores at the site of PS104_20-2, Antarctica. Image credit: J. McKay / Alfred-Wegener-Institut / CC-BY 4.0.

Decline in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Caused Eocene-Oligocene Cooling, Study Says

Aug 3, 2021 by News Staff

New research shows that mean annual temperatures in southeast Australia gradually declined from 27 degrees Celsius during the Middle Eocene epoch to...

Torvosaurus gurneyi. Image credit: © Sergey Krasovskiy.

Cretaceous Dinosaurs Lived in Warm and Variable Greenhouse Climate, Study Suggests

Jun 11, 2021 by News Staff

Paleoclimatologists have precisely reconstructed monthly sea surface temperatures at around 50 °N latitude from fossil shells of bivalve mollusks that...

Life may have begun shortly after Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago. Image credit: Hadeano.

Permanent Oxygenation of Earth’s Atmosphere Occurred Later than Previously Thought

Apr 6, 2021 by News Staff

Oxygen levels fluctuated dramatically for about 200 million years after the start of the Great Oxidation Event, with permanent atmospheric oxygenation...

Toonen et al. challenge the long-held view that the fall of Central Asia’s river civilizations was determined by warfare and the destruction of irrigation infrastructure during the Mongol invasion. Image credit: National Library, Berlin.

Climate Change, Not Mongol Invasion, Destroyed Central Asia’s River Civilizations

Dec 17, 2020 by News Staff

The Aral Sea basin in Central Asia and its major rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, were the center of advanced river civilizations, and a principal...

The Venus of Willendorf, an 11.1-cm- (4.4-inch) tall Venus figurine estimated to have been made 30,000 BCE, in Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. Image credit: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Upper Paleolithic Figurines Showing Women with Obesity May Be Linked to Climate Change

Dec 2, 2020 by News Staff

Obesity is rare in hunter-gatherer cultures. Nevertheless, dozens of handheld ‘Venus’ figurines — the oldest art sculptures of humans known and...

A Homo heidelbergensis, a Neanderthal and a Cro-Magnon. Image credit: SINC / José Antonio Peñas.

Climate Change Drove Early Human Species Extinct, Says New Study

Oct 19, 2020 by News Staff

At least six different species of the genus Homo — H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens —...

Bathymetric map of the Fram Strait gateway and downstream region; red circles indicate location of marine sediment cores. Inset: Danish historical ice chart from the early 20th century showing the extension of the Arctic Ocean-origin sea ice observed along Southwest Greenland. Image credit: Miles et al, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aba4320.

Little Ice Age Triggered by Arctic Sea Ice

Sep 18, 2020 by News Staff

The Little Ice Age, a period of global cooling that lasted from the early 14th century to the mid-19th century, was triggered by an exceptionally large...

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