dispersal

Excavations at a Middle Stone Age archaeological site, Shinfa-Metema 1, in the lowlands of northwest Ethiopia revealed a population of humans at 74,000 years ago that survived the eruption of the Toba supervolcano. Credit: From topographic-map.com Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0 Modern humans dispersed from Africa multiple times, but the event that led to global expansion occurred less than 100,000 years ago. Some researchers…

Simulation of trajectories of microplastic particles released into the North Atlantic Ocean after 0 days (a), 12 days (b), 38 days (c) and 76 days (d). Credit: Credit: Frontiers in Marine Science (2024). DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1314754 Marine microplastics (1 μm–5 mm diameter) are an ever-pressing concern, given their longevity in the environment (>100 years) and the effects they have on the organisms inhabiting them,…

Homo sapiens dispersed from deteriorating environments in Southeast Africa to more optimum environments in Asia. Credit: Ao Hong In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have shown that orbitally induced strengthening of the Asian summer monsoon played a key role in the dispersal of Homo sapiens from Africa to East Asia during the last interglacial period 125,000 to 70,000 years ago.…

Global map showing the change in (a) sea surface temperature (SST), (b) salinity (SSS), and (c) density (SSD) across mangrove bioregions under RCP 8.5. Changes in SST and SSS are based on present-day (2000–2014) and future (2090–2100) marine fields from the Bio-ORACLE database, from which SSD data were derived. The vertical line (19° E) separates the two major mangrove bioregions: the Atlantic-East Pacific (AEP) and the Indo-West Pacific (IWP).…