Posted on 09/24/2019 12:52:07 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Iceland was once home to a unique subspecies of walrus, but the animals had vanished by the mid-14th century, just 500 years after the arrival of Norse settlers...
Researchers have known for years that walruses once lived on Iceland, but opinion has been divided on whether they vanished before or after humans arrived. To settle the debate, Morten Tange Olsen and Xénia Keighley at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark carbon dated the remains of 34 walruses found in western Iceland.
Three of the walruses died after the year 874 – the date permanent settlers are thought to have reached Iceland – with the youngest dating to between 1213 and 1330. In other words, Icelandic walruses survived for a few centuries after humans arrived.
A walrus hunt is described in one late 12th century Icelandic saga: the walrus’s skull and tusks are said to have been sent to Canterbury in the UK to honour the archbishop, Thomas Becket... The new data indicate the walrus in question could have been local to Iceland and not simply a migrant animal visiting the island from elsewhere.
Partly because of such medieval accounts of hunting, and because we know walrus ivory was a valuable commodity at the time, Olsen and Keighley suspect that the settlers were responsible for the disappearance of Iceland’s walruses.
But they also considered an alternative hypothesis: the animals might have fled the island when people arrived, as has happened elsewhere in the North Atlantic...
...an unexpected additional finding that came from examining mitochondrial DNA from the walrus remains. It turns out the animals belonged to a subspecies of Atlantic walrus, but their genetic signature within this subspecies is unlike any seen elsewhere.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Mega McCain is proof that the Vikings didn’t hunt all the Walruses to extinction.
Walrus is delicious, but it’s a pain to knead the dough to make the oversized buns for the walrus sandwiches.
—
I like big buns and I cannot lie
You other brothers can’t deny
Before the Norse settlers arrived, the main business in Iceland was carpentry. And surprisingly all the oysters in the area disappeared.
Perhaps the Vikings were partially responsible for eliminating the walrus from Iceland but I suspect the Medieval Warm Period is more responsible. The habitat became marginal and reduced the number of walrus so that Viking hunting could finish off the remaining ones.
Stop making sense. Do any of these tree-huggers ever consider why some 95% of species that ever existed are extinct?
Upon harvesting a walrus, Alaskan Indians (Aleuts, Eskimos) chow down on the undigested clams found in the animal’s stomach.
They won't be happy with someone bringing up the fact the earth has had cycles of warming without the "evil" internal combustion engine.
...more like Eric the Red salad. ;^).
Greenland too, it seems. But how do researchers differentiate between Greenland walrus and Iceland walrus, being the two islands are so close together?
Maybe they ask The Egg Man? ;^)
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