Science Magazine Podcast What Alaska’s eroding coastline says about Earth’s future, and how Yellowstone ravens use their smarts to find wolf kills
Mar 12, 2026
Evan Howell, freelance science journalist and former geologist, reports from Cape Blossom on coastal erosion revealing potentially 350,000-year-old glacier ice. Matthias Loretto, wildlife ecologist, shows Yellowstone ravens revisit remembered wolf-kill hotspots rather than tailing predators. Claire Bedbrook, neuroscience postdoc, tracked turquoise killifish lifespans to link lifelong behaviors with aging-related molecular changes.
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Ice Linked To MIS-11 Offers Relevant Warm-Period Analog
- The buried Alaskan ice sits within sediments tied to Marine Isotope Stage 11, one of the longest warm interglacials, making it especially relevant to projecting near-future climate scenarios.
- If dated precisely, it could constrain sea-level and ice-sheet models for MIS-11–like warmth.
Date Ice With Gas Isotopes And Water Isotopes
- Use direct gas-dating methods like Krypton-81 or Argon-40 on ice gases to get absolute ages and follow up with water-isotope analyses for paleotemperature estimates.
- Expect analytical backlog delays but prioritize these assays to narrow timing.
Whole Life Fish Recording Compressed To Six Keypoints
- Claire Bedbrook filmed African turquoise killifish at 20 frames per second for their entire ~250-day lifespans, compressing videos into six body keypoints with deep learning.
- This keypoint compression turned massive video datasets into tractable behavioral time series for lifespan analysis.