Ancient wolves on remote Baltic Sea island reveal link to prehistoric humans
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 17-Dec-2025 12:11 ET (17-Dec-2025 17:11 GMT/UTC)
Scientists have found wolf remains, thousands of years old, on a small, isolated island in the Baltic Sea – a place where the animals could only have been brought by humans. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, Stockholm University, the University of Aberdeen and the University of East Anglia, suggest that grey wolves may have been managed or controlled by prehistoric societies.
Tropical cyclones can unleash extensive devastation, as recent storms that swept over Jamaica and the Philippines made unmistakably clear. Accurate weather forecasts that buy more time to prepare are crucial for saving lives and are rooted in a deeper understanding of climate systems. Driving this forward, researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and others have successfully identified a previously unknown cyclic climate pattern by historical reanalysis of datasets and satellite observations. The findings are published in PNAS.
Sixty-million-year-old rock samples from deep under the ocean have revealed how huge amounts of carbon dioxide are stored for millennia in piles of lava rubble that accumulate on the seafloor.
Research led by polar scientists from Northumbria University has revealed new hope in natural environmental systems found in East Antarctica which could help mitigate the overall rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over long timescales.
As Antarctica's ice sheets thin due to climate change, newly exposed mountain peaks could significantly increase the supply of vital nutrients to the Southern Ocean which surrounds the continent, potentially enhancing its ability to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to the research published in Nature Communications.
A team from the Technion Faculty of Biology has discovered how marine viruses use a “Trojan horse” strategy to exploit the energy systems of ocean bacteria, reshaping key global processes. The study, published in Nature, reveals that cyanophages—viruses that infect oceanic cyanobacteria—carry a hijacked bacterial gene, nblA, which dismantles the bacteria’s photosynthetic machinery.
Under normal stress, this gene helps cyanobacteria survive by recycling components of their photosynthetic systems. However, when activated by the virus, it turns against the host: the virus triggers the breakdown to release amino acids it then uses to replicate rapidly. This allows the virus to exploit the host’s resources while destroying it from within.
The discovery was made by Prof. Debbie Lindell, Prof. Oded Béjà, and Prof. Oded Kleifeld, together with Dr. Omer Nadel, Dr. Rawad Hanna, and Dr. Andrey Rozenberg, using a combination of genetic engineering, proteomics, and environmental metagenomics to map the process in detail.
The researchers estimate that this viral mechanism reduces the global photosynthetic energy production of marine cyanobacteria by about 5%, with potential implications for the Earth’s carbon and oxygen cycles.