Researchers at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and colleagues in Germany have taken a closer look at the birch tar used to affix Neanderthal tools and found a much more complex technique for creating the adhesive ...
Neanderthals and other early humans produced a tarry glue from birch bark; this was long considered proof of a high level of cognitive and cultural development. Researchers had long believed that birch tar—used by the Neanderthals ...
Archaeology
Aug 20, 2019
1
1272
Before being colonised by the Vikings, Iceland was lush with forests but the fearsome warriors razed everything to the ground and the nation is now struggling to reforest the island.
Environment
Jul 17, 2019
13
21885
Certain fungi play a critical role in the ecological sustenance of forest trees. Ectomycorrhizal fungi are one such example. Commonly found on pine, oak, and birch trees, ectomycorrhizal fungi form a sheath around the outside ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 28, 2023
1
3143
The traditionally cumbersome yet widely-used Birch reduction can now be carried out in a mere minute in air using an optimized mechanochemical approach.
Biochemistry
Apr 7, 2023
2
246
A new study has shown there could be around eight to ten times as many ancient and veteran trees in England than currently recorded, with estimates ranging from 1.7 to 2.1 million, compared to the 115,000 currently on record.
Plants & Animals
Jun 30, 2022
0
1160
A team of chemists at the University of Pittsburgh has developed a new way to conduct Birch reductions that does not require the use of ammonia, thus avoiding a dangerous procedure. In their paper published in the journal ...
Imagine not a white, but a green Arctic, with woody shrubs as far north as the Canadian coast of the Arctic Ocean. This is what the northernmost region of North America looked like about 125,000 years ago, during the last ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 17, 2021
99
1728
A global observation of an ongoing atmospheric drying—known by scientists as a rise in vapor pressure deficit—has been observed worldwide since the early 2000s. In recent years, this concerning phenomenon has been on ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 8, 2021
2
186
A 15-year experiment on Arctic shrubs in Greenland lends new understanding to an enduring ecological puzzle: How do species with similar needs and life histories occur together at large scales while excluding each other at ...
Ecology
Feb 1, 2021
0
105
