Malus sieversii, a wild progenitor of domesticated apple, is distributed in western Xinjiang of China, eastern part of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. To well understand the genetic structure and the historical demography of this important germplasm resource, we sampled 15 populations with 110 individuals of Malus sieversii from the Yili Valley and the western mountains of the Jungga...

The causes of megafaunal extinctions in North America have been widely debated but remain poorly understood. Mammoths (Mammuthus spp.) in the American Southwest were hunted by Clovis people during a period of rapid climate change, just before the regional onset of Younger Dryas cooling and mammoth extirpation. Thus, these mammoths may provide key insights into late Pleistocene extinction proces...

Three new sediment cores from the Chukchi Sea preserve a record of local paleoenvironment, sedimentation, and flooding of the Chukchi Shelf ( 50 m) by glacial-eustatic sea-level rise. Radiocarbon dates on foraminifera provide the first marine evidence that the sea invaded Hope Valley (southern Chukchi Sea, 53 m) as early as 12 ka. The lack of significant sediment accumulation since ca. 7 ka in ...

A partial steppe bison (Bison priscus) carcass was recovered at Tsiigehtchic, near the confluence of the Arctic Red and Mackenzie Rivers, Northwest Territories, Canada in September of 2007. The carcass includes a complete craniumwith horn cores and sheaths, several complete post-cranial elements (many of which have some mummified soft tissue), intestines and a large piece of hide. A piece of me...

The Valley of Lakes is approximately a 500-km elongate depression in Central Mongolia, where Eocene to Miocene continental sediments are long known for their outstanding fossil richness. The palaeontological record of this region is an exceptional witness for the evolution of mammalian communities during the Cenozoic global cooling and regional aridification. In order to precisely elucidate the...

Desert wetlands are keystone ecosystems in arid environments and are preserved in the geologic record as groundwater discharge (GWD) deposits. GWD deposits are inherently discontinuous and stratigraphically complex, which has limited our understanding of how desert wetlands responded to past episodes of rapid climate change. Previous studies have shown that wetlands responded to climate change ...

We revise the chronostratigraphy of several sedimentary successions cropping out along a 5 km-long tract of the Aniene River Valley in Rome (Italy), which yielded six hominin remains previously attributed to proto- or archaic Neanderthal individuals, as well as a large number of lithic artefacts showing intermediate characteristics somewhere between the local Acheulean and Mousterian cultures. ...

Lakes in the Taylor Valley, Antarctica were investigated to determine the impact of a significant air temperature warming event that occurred during the austral summer of 2001–2002. The warming in the valleys caused an increase in glacial run-off, record stream discharge, an increase in lake levels, and thinning of the permanent ice covers. These changes in the physical environment drove subseq...

As extreme surface processes, long-term river damming and outburst events can impact sediment supply transportation in valleys therefore significantly change the landscape. Lacustrine sediments were identified wide Xigaze Valley, middle reaches of Yarlung Tsangpo River Tibet, an area which has been considered to have a paleodammed lake. However, evolutionary process mechanisms associated with t...