Beringia
Beringia is defined today as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the
The area includes land lying on the North American Plate and Siberian land east of the Chersky Range. At various times, it formed a land bridge referred to as the Bering land bridge, that was up to 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) wide at its greatest extent and which covered an area as large as British Columbia and Alberta together,[2] totaling approximately 1,600,000 square kilometres (620,000 square miles), allowing biological dispersal to occur between Asia and North America. Today, the only land that is visible from the central part of the Bering land bridge are the Diomede Islands, the Pribilof Islands of St. Paul and St. George, St. Lawrence Island, St. Matthew Island, and King Island.[1]
It is believed that a small human population of at most a few thousand arrived in Beringia from eastern Siberia during the
Etymology
The term Beringia was coined by the Swedish botanist Eric Hultén in 1937, from the Danish explorer Vitus Bering.[11] During the ice ages, Beringia, like most of Siberia and all of North and Northeast China, was not glaciated because snowfall was very light.[12]
Geography
The remains of
During the Pleistocene epoch, global cooling led periodically to the expansion of glaciers and the lowering of sea levels. This created land connections in various regions around the globe.[18] Today, the average water depth of the Bering Strait is 40–50 m (130–160 ft); therefore the land bridge opened when the sea level dropped more than 50 m (160 ft) below the current level.[19][20] A reconstruction of the sea-level history of the region indicated that a seaway existed from c. 135,000 – c. 70,000 YBP, a land bridge from c. 70,000 – c. 60,000 YBP, an intermittent connection from c. 60,000 – c. 30,000 YBP, a land bridge from c. 30,000 – c. 11,000 YBP, followed by a Holocene sea-level rise that reopened the strait.[21][22] Post-glacial rebound has continued to raise some sections of the coast.
During the
Refugium
The
During the Ice Age a vast, cold and dry Mammoth steppe stretched from the arctic islands southwards to China, and from Spain eastwards across Eurasia and over the Bering land bridge into Alaska and the Yukon where it was blocked by the Wisconsin glaciation. Therefore, the flora and fauna of Beringia were more related to those of Eurasia rather than North America. Beringia received more moisture and intermittent maritime cloud cover from the north Pacific Ocean than the rest of the Mammoth steppe, including the dry environments on either side of it. This moisture supported a shrub-tundra habitat that provided an ecological refugium for plants and animals.[26][27] In East Beringia 35,000 YBP, the northern arctic areas experienced temperatures 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) degrees warmer than today but the southern sub-Arctic regions were 2 °C (4 °F) degrees cooler. During the LGM 22,000 YBP the average summer temperature was 3–5 °C (5–9 °F) degrees cooler than today, with variations of 2.9 °C (5.2 °F) degrees cooler on the Seward Peninsula to 7.5 °C (13.5 °F) cooler in the Yukon.[28] In the driest and coldest periods of the Late Pleistocene, and possibly during the entire Pleistocene, moisture occurred along a north–south gradient with the south receiving the most cloud cover and moisture due to the air-flow from the North Pacific.[27]
In the Late Pleistocene, Beringia was a mosaic of biological communities.
Analysis at Chukotka on the Siberian edge of the land bridge indicated that from c. 57,000 – c. 15,000 YBP (MIS 3 to MIS 2) the environment was wetter and colder than the steppe–tundra to the east and west, with warming in parts of Beringia from c. 15,000 YBP.[34] These changes provided the most likely explanation for mammal migrations after c. 15,000 YBP, as the warming provided increased forage for browsers and mixed feeders.[35] At the beginning of the Holocene, some mesic habitat-adapted species left the refugium and spread westward into what had become tundra-vegetated northern Asia and eastward into northern North America.[27]
The latest emergence of the land bridge was c. 70,000 years ago. However, from c. 24,000 – c. 13,000 YBP the
Beringia constantly transformed its
Grey wolves suffered a species-wide
The extinct pine species Pinus matthewsii has been described from Pliocene sediments in the Yukon areas of the refugium.[44]
Beringian Gap
The existence of fauna endemic to the respective Siberian and North American portions of Beringia has led to the 'Beringian Gap' hypothesis, wherein an unconfirmed geographic factor blocked migration across the land bridge when it emerged. Beringia did not block the movement of most dry steppe-adapted large species such as saiga antelope, woolly mammoth, and caballid horses.
Human habitation and migration
The
The precise date for the peopling of the Americas is a long-standing open question, and while advances inAround 3,000 years ago, the progenitors of the Yupik peoples settled along both sides of the straits.[74] The governments of Russia and the United States announced a plan to formally establish "a transboundary area of shared Beringian heritage". Among other things this agreement would establish close ties between the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and the Cape Krusenstern National Monument in the United States and Beringia National Park in Russia.[75]
Previous connections
Biogeographical evidence demonstrates previous connections between North America and Asia.[76] Similar dinosaur fossils occur both in Asia and in North America.[77] The dinosaur Saurolophus was found in both Mongolia and western North America.[78] Relatives of Troodon, Triceratops, and Tyrannosaurus rex all came from Asia.[79][80]
The earliest Canis lupus specimen was a fossil tooth discovered at
Fossil evidence also indicates an exchange of primates and plants between North America and Asia around 55.8 million years ago.
See also
- Bering Strait crossing
- Bluefish Caves
- Little John (archeological site)
- Geologic time scale
- Last glacial period
- Paleoshoreline
- Pleistocene
- Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre
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Further reading
- ISBN 978-0-393-35832-2.
- Fagundes, Nelson J.R.; Kanitz, Ricardo; Eckert, Roberta; Valls, Ana C.S.; Bogo, Mauricio R.; Salzano, Francisco M.; Smith, David Glenn; Silva Jr., Wilson A.; et al. (3 March 2008). "Mitochondrial Population Genomics Supports a Single Pre-Clovis Origin with a Coastal Route for the Peopling of the Americas". PMID 18313026.
- Hoffecker, John F.; Elias, Scott A. (2007). Human ecology of Beringia. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-13060-8. Retrieved 2016-04-10.
- Hoffecker, JF; Elias, SA; O'Rourke, DH (2014). "Anthropology. Out of Beringia?". S2CID 19479091.
- PMID 15898833.
- ISBN 978-0-226-66812-3
- PMID 24578560.
External links
- Media related to Bering Land Bridge at Wikimedia Commons
- CBC News: New map of Beringia 'opens your imagination' to what landscape looked like 18,000 years ago
- Shared Beringian Heritage Program
- International National Park in the Bering Strait
- Bering Land Bridge National Preserve
- D.K. Jordan, "Prehistoric Beringia" Archived 2008-12-25 at the Wayback Machine
- Paleoenvironmental atlas of Beringia: includes animation showing the gradual disappearance of the Bering land bridge
- Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre
- Paleoenvironments and Glaciation in Beringia
- Study suggests 20000 year hiatus in Beringia
- The Fertile Shore