Arctic Edmontosaurus lives again: A new look at the 'caribou of the Cretaceous'

Date: May 6, 2020

Source: Perot Museum of Nature and Science

A new study by an international team from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas and Hokkaido University and Okayama University of Science in Japan further explores the proliferation of the most commonly occurring duck-billed dinosaur of the ancient Arctic as the genus Edmontosaurus. The findings also reinforce that the hadrosaurs -- known as the "caribou of the Cretaceous" -- had a huge geographical distribution of approximately 60 degrees of latitude, spanning the North American West from Alaska to Colorado.

The scientific paper describing the find -- titled "Re-examination of the cranial osteology of the Arctic Alaskan hadrosaurine with implications for its taxonomic status" -- has been posted in PLOS ONE, an international, peer-reviewed, open-access online publication featuring reports on primary research from all scientific disciplines. The authors of the report are Ryuji Takasaki of Okayama University of Science in Japan; Anthony R. Fiorillo, Ph.D. and Ronald S. Tykoski, Ph.D. of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas; and Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, Ph.D. of Hokkaido University Museum in Japan.

"Recent studies have identified new species of hadrosaurs in Alaska, but our research shows that these Arctic hadrosaurs actually belong to the genus Edmontosaurus, an abundant and previously recognized genus of duck-billed dinosaur known from Alberta south to Colorado," said Takasaki.

The report states that anatomical comparisons and phylogenetic analyses clearly demonstrate that attribution of the Alaskan hadrosaurines to a unique genus Ugrunaaluk is inappropriate, and they are now considered as a junior synonym of Edmontosaurus, a hadrosaurines genus previously known from lower latitude North America roughly in between northern Colorado (N40?) to southern Alberta (N53?).

The fossils used for this study were found primarily in the Liscomb Bonebed, Prince Creek Formation of the North Slope of Alaska, the location of the first dinosaur fossils discovered in the Arctic.

The team's research also show that the plant-eating hadrosaurs were taking over parts of North America during the Cretaceous, suggesting that Edmontosaurus was likely an ecological generalist.

"In other words, Edmontosaurus was a highly successful dinosaur that could adapt to a wide variety of environmental conditions," said Fiorillo. "It's not unrealistic to compare them to generalized animals today -- such as mountain sheep, wolves and cougars in terms of their range and numbers -- that also roam greater geographic distributions."

Members of this team also found ties to Kamuysaurus japonicus, a new genus species they discovered near Hokkaido, Japan, and named in 2019.

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Alaska's national forests contribute 48 million salmon a year to state's fishing industry

FEBRUARY 7, 2020

by USDA Forest Service

Alaska's Tongass and Chugach National Forests, which contain some of the world's largest remaining tracts of intact temperate rainforest, contribute an average of 48 million salmon a year to the state's commercial fishing industry, a new USDA Forest Service-led study has found. The average value of these "forest fish" when they are brought back to the dock is estimated at $88 million per year.

Led by the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station, the study used Alaska Department of Fish and Game data and fish estimates from 2007 to 2016 to quantify the number and value of Pacific salmon originating from streams, rivers, and lakes on the Tongass and Chugach, which are, respectively, the largest and second-largest national forests in the country. The study focused on five commercially important salmon species—Chinook, coho, sockeye, pink, and chum—caught primarily in four commercial salmon management areas adjacent to these two forests.

"Pacific salmon fisheries are absolutely central to Alaska's economy and culture," said Adelaide Johnson, a Juneau-based hydrologist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station and the study lead. "We suspected that many of the ocean-caught Pacific salmon that support the fishing industry likely began their lives in forest streams that drain the Tongass and Chugach National Forests."

Johnson and Forest Service colleagues Ryan Bellmore and Ronald Mendel, and Alaska Department of Fish and Game's Stormy Haught, used a three-step process to determine the number of fish originating from the Tongass and Chugach. First, they calculated the total number of salmon caught in regional commercial harvest areas. They then subtracted the number of salmon originating from hatcheries—a process facilitated by the hatchery practice of marking juvenile fish—and the number of salmon that originated outside national forest boundaries, such as commercially caught fish that were born in Canadian rivers and rivers farther south in the contiguous United States.

"Our findings underscore just how important Alaska's forest rivers and lakes are for sustaining salmon," said Bellmore, who also is based in Juneau. "At the same time, this study vastly underestimates the value of salmon because it does not include subsistence and recreational salmon fisheries, which are critically important to local communities and the regional economy."

Continued

Collecting polar bear footprints to map family trees

By Anne-Marie Bullock Producer, Costing The Earth

Scientists from Sweden are using DNA in the environment to track Alaskan polar bears.

The technique which uses DNA from traces of cells left behind by the bears has been described as game changing for polar bear research.

It's less intrusive than other techniques and could help give a clearer picture of population sizes.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) comes from traces of biological tissue such as skin and mucus in the surroundings.

Scientists and now conservationists are increasingly using such samples to sequence genetic information and identify which species are present in a particular habitat.

It's often used to test for invasive species or as evidence of which animals might need more protection.

In another application of the technique, geneticist Dr Micaela Hellström from the Aquabiota laboratory in Sweden worked with WWF Alaska and the Department of Wildlife Management in Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow) to collect snow from the pawprints of polar bears.

They tested the technique on polar bears in parks in Sweden and Finland.

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Slime proves valuable in developing method for counting salmon in Alaska

January 3, 2019 by Chris Branam, Oregon State University

Scientists have published a novel method for counting Pacific salmon—analyzing DNA from the slime the fish leave behind in their spawning streams.

The study, funded by The National Geographic Society, is published in the journal Molecular Ecology Resources.

"When we analyzed the environmental DNA sloughed into water from salmon tissues including mucus and skin cells, we got very accurate counts," said Taal Levi, an ecologist at Oregon State University and lead author on the study. "This is a major first step for more informed salmon management decisions because it opens up the possibility to affordably monitor many more streams than the few that are currently monitored."

Pacific salmon are a keystone resource in the Pacific Northwest, with an economic impact of well over $500 million each year in Alaska alone. Currently, spawning salmon are counted at just a few streams due to the reliance on human counters, or in rare cases, sonar. Five species of Pacific salmon—pink, chum, sockeye, coho, and chinook—are distributed through more than 6,000 streams in southeast Alaska alone. More than 1,000 of those streams host spawning salmon.

Salmon are anadromous: They migrate from home streams to the ocean as juveniles, and return a few years later as adults to spawn. Anadromous fish such as salmon provide a straightforward scenario for testing whether environmental DNA (eDNA) can be used to count fish, because large numbers of salmon release their DNA as they pass a fixed sampling point, either as they swim up a river or stream as inbound adults or swim downstream as outbound juveniles.

In many rivers and streams, including the majority of freshwater systems in Alaska, adult salmon returning to spawn are poorly monitored, as are fry and smolt production resulting from spawning salmon.

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Research shows diet shift of beluga whales in Alaska inlet

June 16, 2018 by Dan Joling

Beluga whales in Alaska's Cook Inlet may have changed their diet over five decades from saltwater prey to fish and crustaceans influenced by freshwater, according to a study by University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers.

An analysis of isotopes in beluga bone and teeth showed belugas formerly fed on prey that had little contact with freshwater. More recent generations of belugas fed in areas where rivers pour freshwater into ocean habitats.

New information on Cook Inlet belugas is important because the species is endangered and its numbers have not increased despite hunting restrictions and other protections. Mark Nelson, a wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the lead author of the study, called it a little piece of that puzzle.

"If there's something we can do to help them recover, we might start to know what that might be," he said in a phone interview from Fairbanks.

A population of 1,300 belugas in Cook Inlet dwindled steadily through the 1980s and early 1990s. Alaska Natives harvested nearly half the remaining 650 whales between 1994 and 1998. Subsistence hunting ended in 1999 but the population remains at only about 340 animals.

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This Wily Wolverine Threw Scientists for a Loop

By Martin Robards and Tom Glass, Wildlife Conservation Society | June 8, 2018 07:39am ET

We were not expecting a familiar face as we cracked open the wooden box trap we'd carefully set on the remote north slope of Alaska. But there he was: a wolverine staring back at us, his face covered with the shredded remains of frozen caribou.

As conservationists in Beringia — an (at least historically) icy patch of land and sea that straddles the United States, Canada and Russia, hugging the Bering and Chukchi seas — we have spent a fair share of time considering this elusive carnivore, the wolverine (Gulo gulo).

The stout, canny predator, sometimes scavenger, can grow to be about 45 lbs. (20 kilograms) and is built to withstand the challenging, subzero-degree environment of the Arctic. With feet large enough to act like snowshoes, strong musculature and a honed set of teeth and claws, wolverines can take down an animal as large as a caribou in the middle of winter, but they'll also hunt small rodents, such as ground squirrels, when they're looking for a tasty morsel. Their thick, frost-shedding fur helps them survive at temperatures that, in the twilight of winter, can drop below minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 45 degrees Celsius). [Camera Trapped: Elusive Wildlife Caught in Photos]

Freezing temperatures are no match for the wolverine. These furry beasts will travel wide swaths of territory to find a mate or secure a meal. If they want to save a meal for later, wolverines have been known to cache it in the snow like a hidden trove of TV dinners. 

This particular wolverine staring back at us, however, recently threw us a curve ball: He had traveled great distances in order to enjoy a free meal from our box trap and, as a result, found himself caught in the name of science until we found and released him back into the wild.

To be clear, wolverines are generally thought of as reclusive animals, whose meals often consist of a carcass left behind by another predator. For our research, we use the scent of meat to lure and then trap them in a wooden box. Despite being safe, the trapped wolverines usually appear resigned at best and seem to avoid our traps once they're released. But this wolverine was different, having clearly thrown convention to the wind.  

Continued  https://www.livescience.com/62768-wolverines-box-traps.html

Great scat! Bears -- not birds -- are the chief seed dispersers in Alaska

Date:  January 16, 2018

Source:  Oregon State University

Summary:

In southeastern Alaska, brown and black bears are plentiful because of salmon. Their abundance also means they are the primary seed dispersers of berry-producing shrubs, according to a new study.

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Arctic sea ice loss impacts beluga whale migration

Date: January 5, 2017

Source: University of Washington

 

The annual migration of some beluga whales in Alaska is altered by sea ice changes in the Arctic, while other belugas do not appear to be affected.

A new study led by the University of Washington finds that as Arctic sea ice takes longer to freeze up each fall due to climate change, one population of belugas mirrors that timing and delays its migration south by up to one month. In contrast, a different beluga population, also in Alaska, that migrates and feeds in the same areas doesn't appear to have changed its migration timing with changes in sea ice.

The paper was published Dec. 21 in the journal Global Change Biology.

"The biggest take-home message is that belugas can respond relatively quickly to their changing environment, yet we can't expect a uniform response across all beluga populations," said lead author Donna Hauser, a postdoctoral researcher at the UW's Polar Science Center.

"If we're trying to understand how these species are going to respond to climate change, we should expect to see variability in the response across populations and across time," Hauser said. "That may complicate our predictions for the future."

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Frozen pair of fighting moose discovered in remote Alaska village

Middle school teacher photographs animals encased in ice, lying on their sides with antlers apparently locked, in ‘vision of how brutally harsh life can be’

Associated Press in Anchorage

Saturday 19 November 2016 17.13 GMT

Two moose were recently discovered frozen in battle and encased in ice near a remote village on Alaska’s unforgiving western coast.

Brad Webster, a middle school social studies and science teacher in Unalakleet, captured images of the huge animals poking through the ice as they lay on their sides with antlers apparently locked together.

He had taken a friend who recently moved to the village for a walk on 2 November near a frozen slough at Covenant Bible camp, where Webster volunteers as a camp steward.

 “That’s when we saw it,” he said in a phone interview Friday. He initially thought it was just one moose that had been shot but when he got a closer look, he saw the second moose.

It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing, he said.

It was the end of moose rutting season, and the animals were probably fighting over a female moose. Webster speculates that one of the animals was wounded by the other animal’s antlers, and perhaps died as their antlers were caught together, dragging the rival down with it.

“It was a very interesting experience,” Webster said of the discovery.

On the way back to Unalakleet, he and his friend kept thinking about it and saying, “We really saw that,” in amazement, Webster recalled.

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Long-studied Alaskan wolf pack may be dead after years of aggressive hunting

East Fork wolf pack, found near Denali, was first researched in the 1930s and had shrunk significantly this year – and it’s now believed all may have perished

Oliver Milman

Monday 8 August 201618.24 BSTLast modified on Monday 8 August 201618.37 BST

The world’s longest-studied wolf pack may have been wiped out, wildlife officials fear amid an escalating battle between federal and state authorities in Alaska over the aggressive hunting of predators such as wolves and bears.

The East Fork wolf pack, found near Denali, North America’s tallest mountain, was first researched in the 1930s and provided the first detailed accounts of wolf behavior and ecology. But years of hunting, trapping and habitat disturbance reduced numbers to just one known female, a male and two pups earlier this year. It’s now believed all may have perished.

Bridget Borg, a biologist at the National Park Service, said that the body of the radio collared male wolf was seen at a hunting camp and there appears to be no sign of the female nor pups.

“We investigated a den site after,” Borg told Alaska Public Media. “There was clear evidence it was not being used as evidenced by vegetation that was growing around the entrance to the den site.”

Three of the four pack members fitted with tracking collars have now been killed by hunters in the past year. The possible demise of the entire pack, which was once a common sight for visitors entering Denali, also America’s largest national park, is likely to heighten criticism of Alaska’s intensive hunting of its largest predators.

On Friday, the US Fish and Wildlife Service ruled that hunters will not be allowed to conduct “predator control” in Alaska’s vast national refuges unless there are exceptional circumstances. National wildlife refuges span more than 73m acres of Alaska, including the 20m acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – the largest land-based protected area in the US.

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Alaskan Bears Enjoy a Whale of a Meal

By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | June 10, 2016 02:18pm ET

A naturalist guide for a remote lodge in Alaska recently photographed an incredible sight — close-up views of a beached sperm whale carcass that was being scavenged by brown bears.

The images were captured by Karyn Traphagen, a naturalist guide with the nearby Tutka Bay Lodge in the south central part of the state. She snapped the photos on June 4 as a bear prowled around the carcass and even climbed on top of it, and then posted the photos on her "Stay Curious" Facebook page, where she chronicles her encounters with Alaska plants and wildlife.  

Traphagen told Live Science in an email that the whale was mostly intact when she first saw it, and that bears were "licking the skin and oil and eating soft parts." She described the whale's teeth, visible in the lower jaw, as "bigger than the bear's claws," estimating them to be about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in length.

An airplane pilot first spotted the beached whale in the beginning of June, and Traphagen later led small groups of lodge guests to observe the location  from a distance, so as not to disturb the bears that had begun to feed.

"It was pretty windy, so the smell was not too bad  — yet!" Traphagen said.

- See more at: 

Kodiak bears track salmon runs in Alaska

Date: June 1, 2016

Source: The University of Montana

A University of Montana graduate student's research on Alaskan brown bears and red salmon is the May cover story of the high-profile journal Ecology.

Will Deacy, a UM systems ecology graduate student under the direction of UM Professor Jack Stanford, researched brown bears on Kodiak Island, Alaska, in collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Brown bears are faced with a challenge: They need to consume lots of salmon each year, but salmon only are available for a few weeks in each shallow spawning ground. However, salmon spawn at different times in different habitats, which could allow bears to eat salmon for long periods of time if they move to different spawning grounds. GPS collars allowed Deacy to observe where and when bears foraged for salmon.

"We found that the bears greatly extend their use of the salmon resource by migrating from one run to another," Stanford said. "We call this 'surfing the salmon red wave.'"

"This research shows wildlife have very sophisticated foraging behaviors," Deacy said. "The bears benefited from variation in spawning timing, which is ultimately created by complex natural watersheds. This highlights the need to conserve complexity in wild places."

Read on … 

Pizzly or grolar bear: grizzly-polar hybrid is a new result of climate change

Grizzly bears in Alaska and Canada are moving north as their environment warms, bringing them into contact with polar bears located on the coastline

Oliver Milman

Wednesday 18 May 201618.19 BST

Last modified on Wednesday 18 May 201621.43 BST

Climate change is known for swelling the oceans and fueling extreme weather, but it may be also causing the curious emergence of a new type of bear in the Arctic.

A bear shot in the frigid expanse of northern Canada is believed to be a grizzly-polar bear hybrid, a consequence of the increasing interactions between the two imposing bear species.

Hunter Didji Ishalook originally thought he’d shot a small polar bear but he said it was a “half-breed” – a position backed by several bear experts. The bear was shot near the small community of Arviat, located on the Hudson Bay within Canada’s Arctic region.

“It looks like a polar bear but it’s got brown paws and big claws like a grizzly,” Ishalook said. “And the shape of a grizzly head.”

Sightings of this hybrid species – which has been dubbed either a “grolar bear” or a “pizzly bear” – have become more common in recent years as the Arctic has warmed at twice the rate of the global average.

Grizzly bears found in Alaska and Canada appear to be moving north as their environment warms, bringing them into contact with polar bears located on the coastline.

Polar bears are spending more time on land as Arctic ice diminishes, causing them to lose body weight and decline in numbers as they are unable to hunt for favored prey such as seals.

“The combination of warmer temperatures and vegetation growth means there is more overlap between the species and I’d expect that overlap to increase,” Chris Servheen, a grizzly bear expert at the University of Montana, told the Guardian.

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Hunting wolves near Denali, Yellowstone cuts wolf sightings in half

Date: April 28, 2016

Source: University of Washington

Visitors to national parks are half as likely to see wolves in their natural habitat when wolf hunting is permitted just outside park boundaries.

That's the main finding of a paper co-authored by the University of Washington appearing April 28, 2016 in the journal PLOS ONE. Its authors examined wolf harvest and sightings data from two national parks -- Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska and Yellowstone National Park that straddles Wyoming, Montana and Idaho -- and found visitors were twice as likely to see a wolf when hunting wasn't permitted adjacent to the parks.

"This is the first study that demonstrates a potential link between the harvest of wildlife on the borders of a park and the experience that visitors have within the park," said lead author Bridget Borg, a Denali wildlife biologist who completed this research while earning her doctorate from the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The researchers looked at the dynamics between hunting and viewing wolves at these two national parks because they are the only ones where visitors have a good chance of seeing a wolf. Both parks have long-term monitoring programs that have collected years of data on resident wolf populations, including years when wolf harvest was permitted and years when it was prohibited near the borders of both Denali and Yellowstone.

Adjacent to Denali, wolves are primarily trapped during legal harvests, while states adjacent to Yellowstone permit shooting wolves during hunting season. Wolves have always existed in Alaska and are generally regarded as an important part of the state's ecosystem -- by trappers and wildlife enthusiasts alike.

Read on ...

More moose on the loose in a warmer Alaska

By Matt McGrath

Environment correspondent

Rising temperatures and longer summers have helped the iconic Alaskan moose conquer vast new stretches of frozen tundra according to a new study.

Changes in climate have seen a rapid increase in the size of plants that the moose depend on in winter to survive.

The large, lumbering creatures have moved hundreds of kilometres northwards following the spreading shrubs.

Scientists believe the moose will continue to colonise new territories as warming continues.

The windswept, treeless tundra regions of Alaska saw a rapid decline in moose numbers around the start of the 20th century but there has been a rise in sightings in these northern and western areas since 2009.

This study argues that the changing fortunes of moose in the tundra were due to environmental reasons and not overhunting as some had previously suggested.

While caribou are able to dig down through the snow to find forage in winter, moose can only eat the shrubs and plants sticking through this layer.

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