What's Emerging From the Melting Ice ?

By Franz Lidz
This is a PDF version of the Times article " Emerging From theMelting Ice?" published on
Nov. 2, 2021 and featured in this Lesson of the Day from The Learning Network.

As global temperatures rise, permafrost and

glaciers are rapidly thawing and eroding,
releasing ancient animal remains and human
artifacts.

Here are several items from the unfrozen past .

An ivory owl and a fish basket , both 450

years old, are among more than 100,000
well- preserved items to have emerged
from the permafrost in recent years at a
site 400 miles west of Anchorage .

Thawing permafrost in northeastern

Siberia has revealed Paleolithic cave lions
and woolly rhinoceroses .

Yuka, a mummified baby mammoth, dates

back 39,000 years.

A 280 - million -year -old tree fossil , recovered

near the South Pole, recalls a time when
Antarctica was a forested part of Gondwana ,
the supercontinent that incorporated Africa ,
India , South America , Arabia and Australia .
Researchers with the Glacier Archaeology
Program in Norway have recovered
numerous artifacts, including this 1,300
year-old arrow shaft , which was found near
the Langfonne ice patch.

A length of rope 1,500 years old) and an

iron arrow (2,050 years old offer clues to
the origins of reindeer domestication in
Mongolia .