Science Media Centre

A new study suggests kiwi are more diverse than previously thought, thanks to ice age glaciations driving evolution into multiple lineages. Researchers based in Canada, in collaboration with Department of Conservation scientists, examined a database of kiwi DNA across the geographic range of the five known kiwi species. They found the five kiwi species divided […]

New research has demonstrated how shifted wind patterns caused in the Northern Hemisphere during the last ice age brought warm air to the Southern Hemisphere, ending the ice age. An excerpt: (read in full here) “Those winds also brought hot air and warm seawater south from the equator, which caused the beginning of warming in […]

Will the Southern Ocean carbon sink hold? Ice core records show there was a sharp rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – a nearly 50% increase – at the end of the last ice age. Scientists have long puzzled over the origin of all the extra CO2 that appeared as the great ice sheets […]

Ice core records show there was a sharp rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — a  nearly 50% increase — at the end of the last ice age. Scientists have long puzzled over the origin of all the extra CO2 that appeared as the great ice sheets melted. Now, new evidence published in Science (with accompanying Perspective) […]