An extraction system has been constructed that melts ice from the interior of ice cores and collects the resulting water aseptically. Using this system, bacteria entrapped in ice cores from different geographic locations, that range in age from 5 to 20,000 years old, have been isolated and characterized. Ice cores from the Guliya ice cap on the Tibetan Plateau (China) contained the highest numb...

Multiproxy analyses of sediment cores from Lago Taypi Chaka Kkota (LTCK) Cordillera Real, Bolivia, provide a record of drier conditions following late Pleistocene deglaciation culminating in pronounced aridity between 6.2 and 2.3 ka B.P. Today LTCK is a glacial-fed lake that is relatively insensitive to changes in P}E because it is largely bu!ered from dry season draw-down through the year-roun...

South-Central Andes: Humid or Dry? Betancourt et al. (1) recently challenged the prevailing view that the central Andes were a generally arid zone during the midHolocene (2–7). This debate has wide implications regarding monsoonal and westerly paleocirculation in this area. The archives used by Betancourt et al. (1) are organic and inorganic alluvial deposits that formed in steep valleys along ...

Ice core records from tropical and subtropical ice caps provide unique information about the chemical and physical character of the atmosphere. Seasonal variations in the chemical composition of the snowfall and amount of precipitation accumulating on these ice caps produce annual laminations that allow these stratigraphic sequences to be dated. The thickness of an annual lamination reflects th...

ago, led to the reduction in habitat and the extinction or restriction of several species of beetles. Much later in the midnineteenth century, the arrival of Europeans and their cultivation practices modified the insect fauna of the American Midwest so profoundly that the event is as detectable in the fossil record as any ice age climate change. The lesson from the fossil record of insects is t...