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GALVESTON — A U.S. Navy submarine that can roll on wheels across the ocean floor will leave Pier 40 today on a weeklong expedition to search the deep for evidence of ancient human habitation. The Navy's only nuclear-power research vessel, the NR-1, will carry scientists looking for signs of early humans who may have lived on a coast that 19,000 years ago extended 100 miles farther into the Gulf of Mexico than it does today. If scientists on the expedition, dubbed "Secrets of the Gulf," find evidence that humans roamed those ancient shores, it would push back the earliest known...

This image shows mammoth vertebrae in ice, Yukon Territory, Canada. Credit: Photo Kieren Mitchell, University of Adelaide ******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************* New research has revealed abrupt warming, that closely resembles the rapid man-made warming occurring today, has repeatedly played a key role in mass extinction events of large animals, the megafauna, in Earth's past. Using advances in analysing ancient DNA, radiocarbon dating and other geologic records an international team led by researchers from the University of Adelaide and the University of New South Wales (Australia) have revealed that short, rapid warming events, known as interstadials, recorded during the last ice age or Pleistocene...

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I’ve unearthed from the YouTube dustbin what I believe to be some significant video of man-made global warming alarmist extraordinaire Stephen Schneider’s appearance on a May 1978 episode of the old television series, In Search Of…. For this episode, the show was In Search Of…The Coming Ice Age. I used to watch In Search Of… when I was a kid. I loved it. It was mystery documentary series, and one of the things that made it cool was that it was hosted by Leonard Nimoy, i.e. Spock. In Search Of… did shows on such topics as Bigfoot, The Bermuda Triangle,...

A huge asteroid may have hit the Earth 12,800 years ago causing global climate change and extinction, according to new evidence found in South Africa. Scientists analysed ancient soil at a site called Wonderkrater and found high levels of platinum - which they say supports the The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis that a disintegrating meteor hit Earth and caused a mini ice age. The resulting ice age is believed by many scientists to have wiped out dozens of mammals species including the Mammoth and giant wildebeest and decimated the human population. Scientists believe 'platinum spikes' found in ancient soil samples...

Interview with Ross MacPhee What killed the mammoths and other behemoths that once roamed the Americas? This mammalogist thinks it may have been hyperlethal disease Image: Clare Flemming Around 11,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, North America witnessed an extinction that claimed its mammoths, giant ground sloths, camels and numerous other large-bodied animals. Exactly what happened to these megafauna is unknown. Indeed, researchers have puzzled over their disappearance for decades. Traditional explanations hold that either dramatic climate shifts, or human hunting (overkill) extinguished these species. But in recent years a new hypothesis has emerged. According...

   POSSIBLE "ICE AGE" IN NEAR FUTURE?Written September 6, 2002by Joe D'Aleo Chief WSI/INTELLICAST Meteorologist Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute scientists have theorized that global warming induced by natural and/or human factors could actually bring colder temperatures to some highly populated areas like Eastern North America and Western Europe. In the North Atlantic, an increasing amount of fresh water, perhaps coming from melting ice in the Arctic, has been accumulating and lowering the salinity of the ocean for the past 30 years. Fresh water in the ocean can upset the ocean currents that are the key to our planet’s climate...

PALEONTOLOGICAL TESTIMONY -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Pleistocene Extinction Paleontologists the world over know that something catastrophic happened to the large mammals roaming the world during the Pleistocene Epoch. Woolly mammoths, mastodons, toxodons, sabre-toothed tigers, woolly rhinos, giant ground sloths, and many other large Pleistocene animals are simply no longer with us. In fact, well over 200 species of animals (involving millions of individuals) totally disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene some 10,000-12,000 years ago in what is known to Paleontologists as the Pleistocene Extinction (Click for table). Moreover, there is evidence of large geological changes which took place, such as massive...

Do abrupt climate shifts occur as part of a natural cycle? Despite growing evidence that humans affect climate via urbanization and greenhouse gas emissions, the natural climate cycle may have the final say. Research from Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf at Germany`s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research suggests that the earth`s climate is characterized by an extraordinarily regular cycle of about 1470 years. He found that the five most recent cycles had a standard deviation of only 32 years. Rahmstorf examined ice cores from Greenland. Going back before the 20th century, when weather stations were nonexistent or widely dispersed, ice cores...

THE DALLES, Ore. - The National Park Service has proposed a marked trail to commemorate Ice Age floods through four Western states that left canyons, valleys, lakes and ridges that still dominate the terrain today — some so dramatic they can be seen from outer space. Picture an ice dam 30 miles wide, forming a lake 2,000 feet deep and 200 miles long, stretching from the Idaho panhandle into western Montana, containing more water than Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined. Now picture that dam giving way, the water thundering out in 48 hours, through four states, across Washington and...

The maxim "what goes around comes around" applies to few things more aptly than ice ages. In a rhythm attuned to regular wiggles in Earth's orbit and spin, 10 eras of spreading ice sheets and falling seas have come and gone over the last million years. Through that span, in fact, the cold spells have so dominated that geophysicists regard warm periods like the present one, called the Holocene, as the oddities. Indeed, the scientific name for these periods - interglacials - reflects the exceptional nature of such times. The next ice age almost certainly will reach its peak in...

WASHINGTON - Hunters may not be to blame for the decline in bison populations, according to a new study that points the finger at climate change. Scientists had thought bison were hunted to the brink of extinction when people first crossed an ice-free bridge between what's now Alaska and Siberia. Two subspecies of bison now live in North America. Now researchers say bison DNA shows their genetic diversity began to decline more than 20,000 years before humans reached eastern Beringia in what is now North America, according to archeological evidence.Scientists at Oxford University analysed DNA samples from 442 fossils from...

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An extraterrestrial impact 13,000 years ago wiped out mammoths and started a mini-ice age, scientists believe Margaret Munro CanWest News Service Monday, May 14, 2007 A comet or some other extraterrestrial object appears to have slammed into northern Canada 12,900 years ago and triggered an abrupt and catastrophic climate change that wiped out the mammoths and many other prehistoric creatures, according to a team of U.S. scientists. Evidence of the ecological disaster exists in a thin layer of sediment that has been found from Alberta to New Mexico, say the researchers, whose work adds a dramatic and provocative twist to...

Catastrophic Comet Chilled and Killed Ice Age Beasts Jeanna Bryner LiveScience Staff Writer LiveScience.com Mon May 21, 9:30 AM ET An extraterrestrial object with a three-mile girth might have exploded over southern Canada nearly 13,000 years ago, wiping out an ancient Stone Age culture as well as megafauna like mastodons and mammoths. The blast could be to blame for a major cold spell called the Younger Dryas that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, a period of time spanning from about 1.8 million years ago to 11,500 years ago. Research, presented today at a meeting of the American...

Contact: Lisa Nelson Lisa.Nelson@nau.edu 928-523-6123 Northern Arizona University Research team says extraterrestrial impact to blame for Ice Age extinctions A colorized scanning electron microscope image of a glassy carbon sphere that contains evidence of extraterrestrial impact. The sphere measures about .012 inches in width. What caused the extinction of mammoths and the decline of Stone Age people about 13,000 years ago remains hotly debated. Overhunting by Paleoindians, climate change and disease lead the list of probable causes. But an idea once considered a little out there is now hitting closer to home. A team of international researchers, including two Northern...

Wooly mammoths, giant sloths, saber-toothed cats, and dozens of other species of megafauna may have become extinct when a disintegrating comet or asteroid exploded over North America with the force of millions of hydrogen bombs, according to research by an international team of scientists. The blast, which the researchers believe occurred 12,900 years ago, may have also doomed a mysterious early human culture, known as Clovis people, while triggering a planetwide cool-down that wiped out the plant species that sustained many outsize Ice Age beasts, according to research published online yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ice Age Imprint Found On Cod DNA ScienceDaily (Nov. 14, 2007) — An international team of researchers, led by the University of Sheffield, has demonstrated how Atlantic cod responded to past natural climate extremes. The new research could help in determining cods vulnerability to future global warming.Atlantic cod. Professor Bigg of the University of Sheffield said: "This research shows that cod populations have been able to survive in periods of extreme climatic change, demonstrating a considerable resilience. However this does not necessarily mean that cod will show the same resilience to the effects of future climatic changes due to global...

Sunspot activity has not resumed up after hitting an 11-year low in March last year, raising fears that — far from warming — the globe is about to return to an Ice Age, says an Australian-American scientist. Physicist Phil Chapman, the first native-born Australian to become an astronaut with NASA [he became an American citizen to join up, though he never went into space], said pictures from the U.S. Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) showed no spots on the sun. He said the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7 degrees Centigrade. "This...

Greenland ice core analysis shows drastic climate change near end of last ice age Caption: The North Greenland Ice Core Project camp. Credit: NGRIP Temperatures spiked 22 degrees F in just 50 years, researchers say Information gleaned from a Greenland ice core by an international science team shows that two huge Northern Hemisphere temperature spikes prior to the close of the last ice age some 11,500 years ago were tied to fundamental shifts in atmospheric circulation. The ice core showed the Northern Hemisphere briefly emerged from the last ice age some 14,700 years ago with a 22-degree-Fahrenheit spike in just...