Can Modern Cave Art Tell Us About Prehistoric Cave Art?
Depiction of Woolly Rhinos at Chauvet Cave, Ardèche, France (Patilpv24, SS BY-SA)
One of the most familiar and well-regarded aspects of Paleolithic human history has to be the rich collection of cave art that has been preserved through the ages. Though there is no evidence he ever said this, artist Pablo Picasso has often been quoted as arguing that "we have invented nothing" when faced with prehistoric art (Bahn, 2005). Despite the apocryphal nature of this statement, there is no denying that most reactions to this super-ancient art have been in awe, wonder, and astonishment.
But what is the nature of prehistoric cave art? Why did people paint such images? Thankfully, there is a rich ethnographic record of living people around the world who produce cave and rock art of their own, so perhaps they may have something to say? Or, perhaps, not?
For the purposes of this article, I will mainly be focusing on prehistoric cave art from the European Paleolithic, which is primarily centered around northern Spain and southern France. Prehistoric cave and rock art has been found all over the world, from the Sahara to Australia to the American Southwest and the Amazon, but for a good amount of this there is a living tradition of Indigenous peoples who have maintained connections to this art (Silberman, et al., 2012). With prehistoric European art, however, these connections have long since been severed by continuous population movements and changes in lifeways, beliefs, and practices. Just the existence of such art in Europe alone wasn't even publicly known before 1879 (David, 2017), so we have to rely on comparative methods from ethnography as well as the ongoing research of archaeologists.
The Range of Paleolithic European Cave Art
Depiction of horses and bison from Cueva de Ekain, País Vasco/Basque Country, Spain (Xabier Eskisabel, CC BY-SA 3.0)
"Rock art, sensu stricto, denotes any form of artistic activity on rock" (Silberman, et al. 2012). Much of the cave art I'm interested in here are pictographs, petroglyphs, and engravings: images painted, carved, or incised on the rock surfaces of caves.
Generally, most prehistoric art can be attributed to Homo sapiens, although arguments have been made that Neanderthals and other members of Homo practiced some forms of it (Hoffmann, et al. 2018; Capín, 2025). Paint-making kits utilizing ochre and incised lines date to between 100,000 and 55,000 years ago at South African sites, and it seems highly likely that the practice of making cave art emerged in African Homo sapiens, who carried the practice into Eurasia, Oceania, and the Americas (David, 2017). So far, the oldest definitive rock art in Eurasia comes from Indonesia on Sulawesi at 51,200 years old (Oktaviana, et al. 2014).
In Europe, Homo sapiens was making art by 37,000 years ago at the celebrated Chauvet Cave at Ardèche, France. In fact, dating work at the site revealed two phases of artistic activity, from 37-33.5 KYA (KYA = thousand years ago) and from 31-29 KYA until rock-falls began to close the entrance (David, 2017). This is the site showcased on the 2010 Werner Herzog film Cave of Forgotten Dreams: walls flowing with black charcoal depictions of horses, rhinos, and cave lions with an almost animated quality of movement, light, and shadow techniques. The Arcy-sur-Cure caves and rockshelters of Burgundy, France date to between 28-27 KYA and showcase images of multiple Ice Age species which were revealed through infrared and ultraviolet photography, as the pieces had been encased in a calcite coating since their creation (David, 2017).
Most other cave art in Europe dates to after 27 KYA and lasts in various regions until the tail-end of the Pleistocene Epoch around 11,700 years ago. Lascaux, in Dordogne, France, will be immediately familiar to students of the Ice Age, with its "Hall of the Bulls" depicting enormous aurochs, deer, and horses as well as the mysterious image of a bird-headed person and an eviscerated bison. Altamira, this time in Cantabria, Spain, features polychrome images (in red ochre and black charcoal) of many bison and more abstract forms. The Cougnac caves of Dordogne, France - like many sites- have separate chambers with a seeming focus on specific animals like mammals or birds, which were determined to have been painted by two separate human cultures separated by 10,000 years (David, 2017). The controversial "Sorcerer", a human figure with deer features, hails from caves in the Pyrenees and is accompanied by bison-people and bird-people. Though often underappreciated in some surveys of prehistoric art, at several sites like Laussel and Angles-sur-Anglin are depictions of human profiles and full bodies, at times with sex organs or even sex positions highlighted (Guthrie, 2005; White, 2003). It should also be noted that the cave art we have is often accompanied by mysterious symbols. Animals or objects may be accompanied by patterns of dots, lines, or geometric shapes, and some caves from the earliest times contain several non-figurative signs that look for-all-the-world like written letters.
Nearly all of these sites have been recovered in regions where the paintings and engravings have been safe from wind, rain, and other elemental forces; i.e. caves, whether close to the surface or a mile underground. It seems highly likely that there was visible art elsewhere on the landscape - as it is in other more recent sites - but it could also be that such art was only meant for deeper recesses, to be viewed in certain contexts, hence its ubiquity in such locations (White, 2003). It will always be difficult to test such hypotheses.
All such art is associated with recognizable archaeological cultures, representing widespread societies of Homo sapiens throughout the history of Paleolithic Europe: the Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, and Epigravettian, and sometimes individual walls were painted by distinct peoples of these groups across thousands of years. What is interesting to note about these cultures is that research suggests they were not uniformly hunter-gatherers of a nomadic type. While the earliest European Sapiens seem to have lived in a similar fashion to nomadic bands, the scale of some of the recovered cave art and its associated context suggest varied levels of social organization, a factor I'll return to (Condemi & Savatier, 2019).
The Range of Modern Cave Art
First Nations Australian rock art from the Kimberley region (Claire Taylor, CC BY-SA 2.0)
There have been ethnographically-documented living peoples who create art on cave or rock walls, and today anthropologists continue to work with their descendants to understand and preserve these traditions.
Aboriginal or First Nations peoples in Australia and Tasmania have maintained distinct living rock art traditions stretching back thousands of years. In the Cape York Peninsula of eastern Australia, dating techniques show that by 6,000 years ago a number of depictions of figurative beings: one area boasted human-animal hybrids or therianthropes, another featured moths, one had shown spirit-beings, and so on. Comparisons between these and the recorded distribution of linguistic groups in the region during the early years of colonialism has suggested to anthropologists that these different artistic traditions may represent specific clan totems and, thus, territories for certain nations (David, 2017). In contrast to the relatively small region in western Europe where cave art is most prominent, Australia spans a vast geographic area and encompasses disparate peoples and rock art styles, and so cannot be viewed simplistically as just "First Nations Art" (White, 2003).
As in Europe, rock art showcases extant and long-extinct animals, including thylacines, kangaroos, giant snakes, and the marsupial-lion Thylacoleo. In Arnhem Land, on the Northern territory, is a type of X-ray style which showcases the interior anatomy of humans and other animals, including the skeleton and certain organs. The Bradshaw or Gwion Gwion style of the Kimberly Region of western Australia features a number of different depictions of human beings in various garbs and holding different objects. Artists utilized red hematite, white kaolin clay, and other natural pigments to create these works, and sometimes they even used their own blood (White, 2003; David, 2017).
Another region of the world with an on-going rock art tradition into recent times is among the Bushmen or San of southern Africa, including sites such as Brandberg in Namibia and Drakensberg in South Africa. The art here is, as elsewhere, of a wide range of styles, with some depictions of animals being hyper-realistic down to successful species identification, while others are more abstract or exaggerated. There are images of humans too, some with elaborate dress or in scenes of foraging, dance, and battle. The oldest, from Apollo 11 Cave in Namibia, date to 30 KYA (David, 2017). In more recent times, anthropologists have detected roughly two phases of art in southern Africa: prior to the arrival of Bantu-speaking agriculturalists, images are usually painted in just two colors and the style is more "restful", whereas after the arrival of new peoples the style grows "almost frantic" with increases scenes of conflict and animals depicted with less realism (Severin, 1973).
For Native Americans across the northern and southern continents, there are living traditions and connections to prehistoric rock art, with North America in particular having pieces dating back 7,000 years (Silberman, et al. 2012). In the American Southwest, we see representations of ceremonial and religious motifs. On the Great Plains, Indigenous scholars speak of "Biographical Art" which depicts historic events and figures. One remarkable find at the site of Naj Tunich cave in Guatemala preserves art from the Classic Maya Period, including glyphs, which - thanks to modern scholarship and collaboration with living Maya peoples - we can understand (David, 2017).
What Do Rock Artists Say?
Depiction of hoofed mammals at Tsodilo Hills, Botswana (Oliver Vass, CC BY-SA 3.0)
As you may have gathered, different rock art from around the world means different things to their respective artists, though some commonalities that can be drawn between sites across regions.
For some First Nations Australians, rock art conveyed spiritual meanings. Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen, working in 1899 among the Arrernte people, learned that artists (always men) sought out sacred places for their paintings which were associated with totems, and that only they could visit them during the context of rituals (Gunn, 1999). Other art was less restrictive, and recorded both supernatural beings & stories and natural phenomena & events, including the arrival of European ships (White, 2003). A common instance across much of Australian art is the Dreaming or Dreamtime, a shared story of creation, and demarcate the paths or songlines that ancestral beings took during these early days.
Much of Bushman art also depicts historical events and the goings on of everyday life. Different ethnic groups are drawn in their own unique styles, emphasizing distinctions between communities (Severin, 1973). There is a spiritual element to these images as well. Ethnographic accounts show that much of this rock art was produced by shamanistic artists undergoing ritual trances, depicting elements of San cosmology and beliefs. Specific animals, like the eland antelope, are given prominence for just such reasons: the eland is a symbol of the transformative state of shamans. Some of the figurative images are accompanied by geometric shapes and patterns which are thought to been the visualization of images seen under entoptic or chemical influences (White, 2003). Likewise, among Amerindian peoples, some of the rock art is said to have been produced under spiritually-induced trances, while others are, aforementioned, accounts of history (Silberman, et al. 2012).
Can we say, then, that some of the cave art produced during the European Paleolithic was a result of religious experiences for spiritual customs, or that others were made to record the world around them?
What Do Anthropologists Say?
Depiction of extinct hyena and leopard at Chauvet Cave, Ardèche, France (Carla Hufstedler, Public Domain)
The earliest research done by European scientists on cave art during the late 1800s was rather dismissive of these pieces: they were seen as lazy doodles with no aesthetic meaning by peoples with increased leisure time. By the 1900s, the understanding had now shifted that the art was a kind of sympathetic magic or fertility magic, made during rituals to control nature for successful hunts of the particular animals being depicted. By this time, ethnographic research was informing researchers, and there was much emphasis on cave art being primarily spiritual in quality. However, early anthropologists had been partially misguided; they saw First Nations Australians and the other hunter-gatherer peoples they studied as primitives in a simple state-of-nature. There were religious elements to much of the art they produced, it was true, but in their Eurocentric-framework scientists argued that their beliefs were simple and only concerned with the hunt (David, 2017).
In fact, since that time, it has fallen out of practice to rely too heavily on modern forager peoples to inform on prehistoric cave art and the people who produced them, just because their shared modes of food-production were through hunting and gathering. A quick sweep through the ethnographic record reveals diverse hunter-gatherer lifeways with innumerable particularities in religious modes and spiritual beliefs, besides, and just because one group painted animals to symbolize totems or creation myths, doesn't necessarily mean that prehistoric Europeans did the same.
I've already mentioned that Paleolithic cultures do not appear to have all been nomadic hunter-gatherers, so just like living forager groups, their social organization varied in important ways. For example, it has been proposed that the Aurignacians shared a sense of common origin in the way that ethnographically-documented tribal societes have, unlike smaller-scale nomadic bands, whereas the Gravettians and Magdalenians may have been semi-sedentary and gathered into small villages supporting even larger numbers of people than tribal groups. Such levels of organization suggest the possibility that cave art of such complexity as seen in Chauvet or Lascaux was able to be produced through specialized labor, by people who were not focused on providing food but instead could hone their artistic abilities over time (Condemi & Savatier, 2019). The takeaway here is that there was no "average prehistoric European", even at the earliest stages of Sapiens' presence there, so we shouldn't expect super similar cultures producing art under the same customs.
Nowadays, anthropologists take a holistic approach to understanding cave art, one that factors in the available archaeological evidence as well as ethnographic inferences, but without relying too heavily on one or the other.
When studying cave art of the Magdalenian or Epigravettian cultures, researchers note several factors. Images were painted or engraved in areas that were not used as living spaces; they are often found in caves that were quite dangerous to traverse - in an age of torches and lamps of oil or fat, those who navigated them knew what they were doing; patterns of wear on stalactites and acoustic-studies in some of the caves suggest that sound seemed to have played a role in art production; the in-situ natural features of caves were often used to help give art-subjects form and motion; by all accounts, depictions of hunting or wounded animals are rare to nonexistent; and, notably, what physical remains of human activity like hand or footprints are present show that all sexes were using the caves and creating these pieces, not just males (White, 2003). Such data has helped refute several classic hypotheses over the last century that you may have read about in vintage paleo-books.
As we've seen previously, some caves were visited by people belonging to distinct cultures and living across thousands of years. 10,000 years span the time of activity at the Cougnac caves of Dordogne, France. This is almost as long as the full history of humans during the Holocene Epoch; twice as long as the entire written record. There is no justifiable way to argue that the artists throughout all that time made art with the exact same meaning.
Several studies over the years have, thus, developed unique explanations for different cave sites, all with fair probability and not mutually-exclusive. As accounted by Jo Marchant in The Human Cosmos, some researchers like Norbert Aujoulat and Michael Rappenglück argued that the cave art of Lascaux may have had astronomical functions. Their analyses show that certain animals were painted in a specific order and style that represents seasonal changes associated with mating, and it is hypothesized that the large aurochs in the "Hall of the Bulls" may be a depiction of the constellation Taurus, complete with dots representing the Pleiades star cluster (Marchant, 2020).
More recent work by Bennett Bacon and colleagues draw attention to the non-figurative letter-like symbols that often accompany animal pieces, some of which date back to the dawn of European Homo sapiens. Their research indicates that there is a communicative function to these symbols, which conveyed calendrical information to various animals and their behavior as shown in the caves. In other words, a form of early writing (Bacon, 2023). In fact, at cave sites around the world, similar symbols have been found with strong similarities in regions as far apart as North America and Australia; it is implied, then, that early Homo sapiens developed this symbolic ability in Africa and brought it into Eurasia and beyond (George, 2016).
Some prehistoric cave art in Europe depicted the world as it was through an understanding of natural history. Others may have been related to spiritual matters, the particulars of which are lost to time. Some may have been produced by specialized artists, others may have been activities the whole group participated in. Others still may have completely different functions. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to studying prehistoric cave art, and modern rock artists do not have all the answers. Like much of human history, even as far back as 30,000 years ago, it's complicated.
Book References
Silvana Condemi & François Savatier - A Pocket History of Human Evolution (The Experiment, 2019)
Bruno David - Cave Art (“World of Art” series, Thames & Hudson, 2017)
R. Dave Guthrie - The Nature of Paleolithic Art (The University of Chicago Press, 2005)
Jo Marchant - The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars (Penguin Random House LLC, 2020)
Timothy Severin - The Horizon Book of Vanishing Primitive Man (American Heritage Publishing Co, 1973)
Neil Asher Silberman, et al. - The Oxford Companion To Archaeology: 2nd Edition (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Randall White - Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2003)
Paper and Article Citations
Bennett Bacon, et al. 2023. An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar (Cambridge Archaeological Journal)
Paul Bahn, 2005. A Lot of Bull? Pablo Picasso and Ice Age cave art (MUNIBE: Antropologia-Arkeologia)
Miriam García Capín, 2025. Neanderthal cave art? A proposal from cognitive archaeology (Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports)
Alison George, 2016. "Code hidden in Stone Age art may be the root of human writing" (NewScientist)
Robert G. Gunn, 1999. Spencer and Gillen's contribution to Australian rock-art studies. (Academia)
Dirk. L. Hoffmann, et al. 2018. U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art (Science)
Adhi Agus Oktaviana, et al. 2024. Narrative cave art in Indonesia by 51,200 years ago (Nature)
"We are all connected to each other, in a circle, in a hoop that never ends." (Walt Disney Animation Studios. All film screenshots are courtesy of Animation Screencaps, under Fair Use for commentary purposes)
Pocahontas is the 33rd animated feature film from Walt Disney Animation Studios and was released on June 1995 to decent box-office success. Since the time of release - and even during the film's production - the world has responded to the movie in myriad ways, ranging from high praise to damning condemnation.
As a fan of traditional animation and a passionate student of anthropology, I have my own thoughts on Pocahontas. It was a film I grew up with and was fondly looked upon by my sisters and I. In recent years, I've looked at it more critically and found that my feelings on the movie were quite mixed. Pocahontas is an entertaining and visually stunning film with a great soundtrack, but it also suffers heavily from excessive melodrama and the feeling of a tremendous weight of historical and cultural baggage, try as one might to ignore it.
I initially planned this post to be a simple dive into my positive and negatives thoughts on the movie itself, but as I read heavily on both the film's production and the actual historical scholarship of Pocahontas, John Smith, the Powhatan Empire, and Jamestown, the more I realized that there was a rich and fascinating history to share. And I thought back to my mother - who asked me once during a rewatch of the film: "was any of this based on real events?" - I knew that laying out the real story would be beneficial for my readers.
So, for this article, I'm going to go through the story of the film in parallel with the real history of America in 1607, stopping along the way to highlight relevant aspects of the production-history and my scattered opinions on the film. Consider this a "supplemental guide" to Pocahontas.
"For the New World is like heaven, and we'll all be rich and free. Or so we have been told by the Virginia Company." (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
New World Ventures
The film opens on the crew of the Susan Constant setting sail for North America, to the tune of a Baroque-themed British chorus which briefly explains the role of the Virginia Company (Bossert, 2015). It's a very catchy tune. We're introduced to both Captain John Smith who, over the course of several minutes, is shown as a dashing and brave man seeking adventure, and Governor John Ratcliffe who extrudes greed and false-pomp.
Europe had a continuous colonial presence in the Western Hemisphere for over 100 years by the time the film takes place. The real breadwinner was Spain, which had settled in Central and South America, devastated the lives of the Amerindian nations, and built up substantial profits in the form of precious metals, land claims, and religious conversions. England, by contrast, was a poor player. The Hundred Years War brought the country to the infancy of a nation-state but also gifted it substantial debts; it couldn't afford to colonize the New World even if it wanted to.
And it certainly wanted to. A key player was Richard Hakluyt, an influential writer who urged England to colonize the Americas. He argued that God had blessed Spain for its conquest with immense riches because they converted so many natives; therefore, if England wanted to be rich and powerful, they needed to travel to America and proselytize on a similarly massive-scale (Mann, 2011 B; Elliott, 2006). As well, he recognized that Spain's failed attempt to take Florida left the eastern seaboard open for the taking, so England must establish a strong colonial & military presence there to beat the might of the Spaniards (Hämäläinen, 2022). Reluctantly but hopefully, the sovereigns took the risk and passed the role of colonization over to various joint-stock companies: "groups of wealthy people who pooled their resources to fund a commercial enterprise, being repaid by shares of the proceeds" (Mann, 2011 B). These proto-corporations allowed for the construction of ships full of supplies, and encouraged any Englishmen to invest their time to open-ocean voyages for the promise of riches and land in return. After several failed attempts (including the infamous Roanoke colony), the Virginia Company was chartered in 1606, having the support of around 1700 stockholders, and amassing a crew of 144 men which set sail that December (Kurin, 2013).
I should mention this now, but it would be pointless to point-out every inaccuracy in Pocahontas. The voyage started in 1606 not 1607 as stated in the opening musical number. No, John Smith wasn't a captain at the time: that honor goes to Christopher Newport. There were actually three ships which sailed to Virginia, not just the Susan Constant as seen in the film. And so on and so forth. That's not the point of this article. My ultimate goal is to supplement the film's story with the background historical narrative. Any discussion of inaccuracies plays a role in discussing the myth-making surrounding the legend of Pocahontas & John Smith, not in nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.
Densely Inhabited Land
"These pale visitors are strange to us. Take some men to the river to observe them. Let us hope they do not intend to stay." (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
Following the voyage of the Susan Constant, we're then treated to a parallel musical number "Steady as the Beating Drum", which showcases the life of the Powhatan people and some of their philosophies. It is here where we meet Chief Powhatan and, soon, Pocahontas herself. There is an authenticity to the music here that is admirable: Jim “Great Elk” Waters and his ensemble were brought into the recording studio to provide Northern Algonquin chants and songs for the number, which was supplemented by lyricist Stephen Schwartz's research into eastern Native American poetry (Bossert, 2015).
The setting for the remainder of the film is Tsenacomoco - "densely inhabited land" - an Indigenous empire which covered a vast area of modern-day southeast Virginia from the Appalachians to the Chesapeake Bay. Powhatan is the "throne name" for the paramount ruler Wahunsenacawh, who exercised his power over thirty tribes and a total of around 24,000 people. As in other Pre-Columbian empires, Chief Powhatan gained so much through subjugation of neighboring villages, and this often required an excess of power rather than violent slaughter. Conquered tribes swore allegiance to Powhatan, their leaders becoming symbolically-adopted as members of his family while retaining their leadership positions, and they had to provide up to 80% of their food and goods to him. By all accounts, he was quioccosuk "a god on Earth" and carried immense spiritual power over his fellows. (Hämäläinen, 2022; Hoxie, 1996).
While Pocahontas was his daughter, Wahunsenacawh also enjoyed the privilege of being married to several women at any one time and having many many children; not only did his bloodline run deep across Tsenacomoco but his political power was strengthened (as his wives were chosen from across the conquered districts). By the time he was 60 years old in 1607, he had been married to over a hundred women. In Powhatan society, succession was matrilineal, so none of his children were destined to rule after him. Instead - had history played out differently - he would be succeeded by his brothers, then his sisters, and then his sister's daughters (Hoxie, 1996).
Thinking about this, the filmmakers would have been presented with a rather... awkward situation in portraying the character of Chief Powhatan had the film gone differently. I cannot reasonably expect a mainstream American animated family film to have a major character with such a vast ever-changing polyamorous marriage, much less being an empire-builder that subjugates his fellow nations and makes them his adopted family. Perhaps they could have, but that seems like more of a risk that would upset audiences with children. Thus, in the finished film, Chief Powhatan has been reduced to a simple leader who speaks of his daughter and her deceased mother, represented by the leaves in the wind (Audio Commentary, 2005).
The portrayal of the lands and vibes surrounding Tsenacomoco in the film have left me very wanting. This is a symptom of the myth-making which overreached the production of Pocahontas.
In the history of anthropology, there was a concept called "the noble savage" which was popularized by writers like Jean-Jacque Rousseau in the 1700s, which argued that pre-contact peoples (or anyone which did not live in what Europeans considered 'civilization') lived in a state of nature, at peace with themselves, their neighbors, and their environment. I'm reminded of April Midthunder's character in FX's Reservation Dogs, who portrays a New Age Indigenous activist that exposes much of these same beliefs. Despite centuries of pushback, this concept has never truly left the world. To the film's credit, the production crew did try to correct these misconceptions in important ways, for example, in introducing Chief Powhatan's army returning from a battle with the Massawomeck, Iroquoian-speakers from the northwest of the empire.
But in many ways Pocahontas highlights "noble savage" concepts very bluntly, and we see this in the portrayal of Tsenacomoco as a tight-nit community surrounding by wilderness. While it is true that Wahunsenacawh's home village was located by a river (riverways formed essential highways), much of the surrounding lands would have been cleared for maize agriculture with just a scattering of large trees between them (Mann, 2011 B). For all the talk in "Colors of the Wind" about not cutting down trees, we must be reminded that the vast sweep of this region of eastern North America had been either substantially cleared of woodland through Indigenous slash-and-burn practices or cultivated through agroforestry (Mann, 2011 A). It is true that North American Amerindians sustained ecologically diverse landscapes through these practices, but it is also true that they were not passive actors in the landscape or children of nature.
As well, the highly spiritual aspects of the film - while not necessarily inaccurate - owe a lot more to modern interpretations and stereotypes than the evidence we have. Irene Bedard, the speaking-voice for Pocahontas, says this in the 1995 Making-of Featurette: "The Powhatans were deeply spiritual. Their culture was based on strong appreciation and respect for nature and their environment". That's a bit of a stretch; as we've just seen Wahunsenacawh was the architect of a large empire whose culture seemed to be based more on his expansionist whims than any ecological principles, even if those may have been on his mind. The truth is, we know very little about the spirituality of the historic Powhatans: we have aspects of deities, culture-heroes, a concept of the four-winds or four-corners, and descriptions of the priesthood recording in the Jamestown writings, but these were never elaborated upon (Birket-Smith, 1960). Besides, for several decades now the stereotype of the "ecological Indian" has done more than its fair share of work to infuse a film like this, especially in the rush of pop-culture environmentalism in the 1990s. If I could guess, much of the spiritualism depicted in the film likely stems from the modern Pamunkey Tribe, whom the Disney artists consulted with (Daily Press, 1993). Today they and other survivors of Tsenacomoco practice traditional beliefs infused with Christian principles, a legacy from "itinerant Baptist preachers who converted most of the Powhatans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries" (Hoxie, 1996).
The general layout of the homes, community areas, and material objects are, nonetheless, spot-on, something which the film's directors were happy that no-one seemed to critique (Audio Commentary, 2005). Russell Means, speaking-voice actor for Chief Powhatan, provided additional consultation to get those details right (The Making of Pocahontas, 1995).
Little Hellion
"Don't you think we're getting a little old for these games?" (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
Now onto Pocahontas herself. In the film, we're treated to a vibrant, fun-loving, and empathetic young woman in her 20s, who is unsure about her path in life, torn between her own desires and her duty to her people. In typical Disney fashion, she has animal friends but also - in a rare case - a human friend Nakoma whom she can talk to (this is an aspect of the film I really enjoy; for what little screentime they have their chemistry is great). She also has Grandmother Willow, an elder which provides wisdom and guidance (nevermind that weeping willow trees are native to China and wouldn't be introduced into North America until a hundred years later. Details details lol).
A lot of ink has been spilled on the character of Pocahontas and her relation to her historic counterpart. Most everyone knows now that her real name was Matoaka, Pocahontas being an effectionate nickname meaning "little hellion" or "little mischief" (Mann, 2011 A). As well, most everyone knows now that she was somewhere between 10 and 12 years old when she met John Smith and the Jamestown settlers. Of her personality beyond her antics, Smith wrote nothing but high praise, treating her as someone without-equal among her people, quick-witted, wise, and with a warm heart (Hoxie, 1996). Beyond this, the filmmakers were not left with much and filled in much of the blanks themselves.
"I always saw Pocahontas as a child of nature. Pocahontas is one with nature as are the animals, streams, trees, leaves. It was impossible for me not to think of her as part of that world," said story artist Joe Grant (Rebello, 1995). Interactions and consultations with two Pamunkey women of the McGowan family ("one of several generations of Mattaponi chiefs"), Shirley “Little Dove” and Debbie "White Dove", heavily influenced much of the personality for Pocahontas (Daily Press, 1993; Rebello, 1995). And, as I'll elaborate on later, the romantic story the filmmakers wanted to portray painted much of how the titular character behaved in the movie.
Pocahontas' character design has also been a source of much contention. Given that the filmmakers aged her up to make her love-story with John Smith more palatable, there seemed to have been a concerted effort to make Pocahontas as beautiful as possible. I do think she is absolutely gorgeous, but I cannot help but shake a slight feeling of ick when I think about, say, Jeffrey Katzenberg's directions for supervising animator Glen Keane to make Pocahontas "the finest creature the human race has to offer" (Edgerton & Jackson, 1996). Or how Keane scoured his copy of "Feminine Beauty" and referenced supermodels to master his visions: "We’re doing a mature love story here, and we’ve got to draw her as such. She has to be sexy" (Rebello, 1995; Edgerton & Jackson, 1996). That's not to say that designing a beautiful woman is necessarily sexist, but there is a well-known discourse about the sexualization and exoticization of Indigenous women that necessarily has to factor into things like this.
What is always interesting to note is that some historical accuracy in the clothing of the Powhatans had to be sacrificed in the name of censorship, in contrast to the costume of the English which was rigorously detailed. According to Chief Mark Custalow, a consultant for the film, "they had to put clothes on the characters for the movie. Let's just say that tops weren't a big fashion statement then" (Rickey, 1995). Pocahontas' outfit is thus anachronistic, even down to the way her hair is shaped: instead of her long, free-flowing hair, she would likely have had the sides of her head shaven.
The First Permanent English Settlement in North America
"All the riches here, from this minute, this land and what's in it, is mine!" (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
Pocahontas sees "white clouds" on the horizon: the Susan Constant has arrived in Chesapeake Bay. The settlers make landfall and Governor Ratcliffe proclaims the land in the names of King James I. While John Smith explores the rugged, vast terrain, Ratcliffe sets the colonists to work on digging up the gold they'd been promised was there. As the days continue on, Ratcliffe frets about the lack of riches, let alone decent food, as the fort is quickly built after a Powhatan ambush. He quickly rationalizes that the gold is being hidden from them by the Natives.
Let's talk about Ratcliffe. He's our film's main antagonist... well, actually that's not really true. According to co-director Eric Goldberg, "prejudice was the villain, for which Ratcliffe fell prey to" (Audio Commentary, 2005). "Ratcliffe carries the racism and greed in the movie. Where the other settlers are kind of proto-American, Ratcliffe is a real colonialist who hasn’t come to Virginia to settle but to exploit." says Duncan Marjoribanks, supervising animator (Rebello, 1995). In Pocahontas, Ratcliffe is presented as an archetype symbolizing all the violence, greed, and inhumanity that European colonization brought to the Americas. As such, he's presented as an almost cartoonishly-evil villain lacking in much self-reflection or real depth. This is in high contrast to the rest of the settlers, who for all intents and purposes are supposed to be viewed as sympathetic men lured to participating in land-possession and genocide on behalf of Ratcliffe; once Ratcliffe is removed, suddenly all the negative aspects of colonialism are too.
This is obviously remarkably naive on the part of the filmmakers, who nonetheless have done a well-lauded job in highlighting the truth about colonization. It's a remarkable contradiction. Compared to much of the media and imagery I viewed as a child about this period of American history, Pocahontas bluntly opens its story by explaining that the English came to America for profit and exploitation, not being afraid to kill Native Americans to achieve that goal. The language of the settlers is full of blatant racism and apathy towards the Indigenous peoples, the character Thomas going as far to cheerfully say "I'm going to get a pile of gold, build me a big house, and if any Indian tries to stop me, I'll blast him."
There's also an interesting underlying commentary on the class-distinctions occurring on behalf of the Virginia Company. In the film Governor Ratcliffe inspires his men to spend days digging for gold and building the settlement, but never performs any labor himself, which doesn't go unnoticed by the men. In the aforementioned writings of Richard Hakluyt, he treated the colonization of the Americas as "a leisurely occupation for the elite, if they could persuade poor English people and the Native Americans to do the heavy lifting" (Hämäläinen, 2022). The Virginia Company even went as far as to tell Captain Newport to hide any instances of death from the other colonists to "prevent ‘the Country people’ from perceiving ‘they are but common men' " (Elliott, 2006).
In April 1607, when the English arrived in the Chesapeake region, they initially found plentiful food in the land and sea, but there was pressure to settle further inland. The directors of the Virginia Company has urged the settlers to pick a spot far enough away from the coast to avoid detection by the Spanish, and take great care no to offend the people of Tsenacomoco for fear that they would ally with Spain against them. As a result, they made landfall on a small, swampy, uninhabited island, rife with mosquitoes and undrinkable water... and during a multiyear drought no less (Mann, 2011 B). To add insult to injury, the Virginia Company did not allow individual colonists to make their own land claims, nor did they pay salaries in proportion to the mount of work they actually did, so the lower-class who was already "undermanned and ill prepared" to establish a colony gradually lost the drive to build their new life (Kurin, 2013).
Where does John Smith fit in all this? According to supervising animator John Pomeroy, Smith's "plotline in the movie is that he’s living an unexamined life, is afraid to see the hole in himself. So, to escape, he seeks one adventure after another" (Rebello, 1995). It seems true that John Smith experienced many adventures prior to his accompaniment on the Jamestown expedition, though historians generally take a critical-lense to his own writings like True Travels as Smith was prone to boasting and exaggeration. In contrast to the film, John Smith's larger-than-life attitude earned him more scorn than praise from his fellows: he was under arrest for mutiny for the much of the trip to Virginia and, as a member of the lower-class, frequently clashed with the higher English gentlemen (Mann, 2011 B).
Clash of Cultures
"They're not like you and me, which means they must be evil. We must sound the drums of war!" (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
In the film, the Powhatans take a cautious approach to the English. Chief Powhatan is unfamiliar with their appearence, mores, and weapons, and after a brief skirmish wants absolutely nothing to do with them except see to their elimination from the coast. The English, in similar manner, are inherently frightened of the "savages", and Governor Ratcliffe outlaws all contact with the Indigenous that does not involve their deaths.
This is yet another aspect of Pocahontas which deviates so heavily from the actual history as to be somewhat distracting, but it has to be understood that all these changes were for a very clear purpose. The filmmakers desired to create a movie which addressed prejudice and hatred "with its clash of two worlds and its especially timely theme of ‘If we don’t learn to live with one another, we will all destroy ourselves'," according to then President of Disney Feature Animation Peter Schneider who goes on to say, "it is an important message to a generation of people to stop fighting, stop killing each other because of the color of your skin, who you are, because you feel differently about religion" (Rebello, 1995). Co-director Eric Goldberg even went as far as to reveal that a big motivating factor for his work on the film was his reaction to the 1992 Los Angeles riots, in words that, to me, seemed to imply he viewed those civil disturbances as nothing more than senseless violence (Audio Commentary, 2005). There was a genuine belief that such messages were to make up the heart of the film, a not undesirable goal I will admit, it just seems that the setting and characters were an odd choice to do so.
As stated before, the Virginia colonists were under strict orders to behave without malice towards the Powhatans. After making landfall and establishing Jamestown, Captain Newport took several men and boat down the newly-named James River until they arrived at Wahunsenacawh's home village, deep within the Tsenacomoco empire. There, an inscripted cross was placed by a waterfall and the land claimed for England under King James. Upon their first meeting with Wahunsenacawh, gifts were exchanged and an conflicted-understanding was reached between the two leaders: Newport saw the Powhatans as valuable allies to protect against the Spanish and an aid to provisioning the colony, while Wahunsenacawh saw the English as valuable allies to protect against neighboring Indigenous enemies. The English muskets, in particular, seemed promising weapons and many were acquired. Tensions remained high, nonetheless. While Newport continued his investigations of the James River, a scouting party of Powhatans raided Jamestown and, in response, the English ships sailed to nearby villages and shot at them with cannons (Elliott, 2006).
For the English colonists, such acts of increased violence would have confirmed the barbarian-nature of the people they came to ultimately subjugate physically and spiritually. For the people of Tsenacomoco, the use of violence was resistance to foreign powers in the name of self-preservation and for the empire. England entered their lands and claimed them for itself, under a philosophy of profit, exploitation, and assimilation. If one takes the film's point-of-view, none of this really matters: it's just senseless intolerance and violence "on both sides". This mentality is encapsulated well in the song "Savages" at the penultimate scene of the film, "a very powerful song that attempts to expose the ugliness and stupidity that results when people give into racism and intolerance" (Bossert, 2015). Again, admirable on paper, but I don't think it takes a genius to explain why "both-sidesing" the European colonization of the Americas is a stupid idea.
The Climax of the Legend
"Look around you. This is where the path of hatred has brought us. This is the path I choose, Father. What will yours be?" (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
It's at this point that the story of the film reaches a significant climax. In all this time, Pocahontas and John Smith have met and fallen in love with each other. Smith is falsely-accused of killing Kocoum, Pocahontas' fiancée, and is captured and sentenced to execution by Chief Powhatan. The Indians plan a massive military campaign against the English, while the English respond with their own campaign of complete destruction. John Smith is seconds away from death when Pocahontas intervenes, proclaiming her love for him and stating how foolish all this violence has been. Chief Powhatan, with aid from the spirit of his late wife, lays down his arms and frees Smith. Governor Ratcliffe's authority is dismantled and now the two societies can begin healing under Pocahontas' guidance.
At the time of the film's production, there was much controversy about what really transpired that day. Recent scholarship has since eased up somewhat.
It was May 1607, and on a separate expedition along the Chickahominy River, John Smith and his crew were ambushed by a large party of Powhatans and taken into custody of Wahunsenacawh. It appears that this was a plan concocted by the chief with the goal of gaining more information about the English from a trusted source, as well as exercising his imperial authority over them. Jamestown was to be yet another addition to the empire of Tsenacomoco, and Wahunsenacawh to be their spiritual father. Smith was ritualy "executed" in December and the most that Matoaka seems to have played in this was symbolically "bringing him back to life". There is no evidence of romantic affection here. Smith was now Wahunsenacawh's "son" and an honorary, subordinate chieftan for Tsenacomoco, recalling in his writings "how well Powhatan loved and respected me". He was then returned to Jamestown in Janurary 1608 with promise of trade and aid for the colony, to whom Matoaka and the other Powhatan women brought maize and other crops to feed the starving, dying men. Smith would take on a greater authority in the maintainence of Jamestown (Hämäläinen, 2022; Mann, 2011 B).
This is certainly far from the legend surrounding Pocahontas and John Smith that we see in the film, much less in all the other media depictions which have heightened her role as well as her age. Says Curator of the Virginia Historical Society William M. S. Rasmussen, "almost every artist and writer who has dealt with the story of Pocahontas has made her considerably older. The historical facts have been manipulated by various artists, writers, and now filmmakers for well over 200 years, to get the greatest drama that they can out of it" (Live from Central Park, 1995). The film, indeed, makes a great deal out of the drama, taking what was originally the end of the first act and elevating it to the climax of the film as per the argument of Glen Keane (Audio Commentary, 2005). As a climax it is very effective and moving, and makes great use of both cinematography and score.
What is remarkable to discover that from the earliest stages of development, there was a goal to make a story that was closer to the actual history than what we got. Early concept art showed Pocahontas as a young child, for example. Co-director Mike Gabriel, the original source of inspiration behind the film recounted, "as soon as I thought of the Native American girl Pocahontas and her coming together with John Smith - a story of two separate, clashing worlds trying to understand each other - it hit me that this was it" (Rebello, 1995). During the infamous 1990 "gong show" meeting with Disney execs, Gabriel pitched his movie: "An Indian princess who is torn between her father's wishes to destroy the English settlers and her wishes to help them – a girl caught between her father and her people, and her love for the enemy."
There is, at first, no hint of a great romance between Pocahontas and John Smith, rather a general love for the English alongside that of her people. But it wouldn't be long before that changed.
The Greatest Love Story Ever Told
"For if I never knew you, if I never knew this love, I would have no inkling of how precious life can be." (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
The Disney higher-ups had been looking to work on an animated adaptation in the vein of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at the start of the 1990s, but there were troubles with finding the right inspiration. So when Mike Gabriel came along and pitched his film - having already in his mind a desire to work on a Native American story - two-and-two clicked: the legend surrounding the supposed romance of Pocahontas and John Smith, which its setting in early America, seemed to work brilliantly in their minds (Rebello, 1995; Finch, 1995). If there was an interest in historical accuracy, it was mainly surface-level, as the Disney artists have repeatedly argued that their work was inspired first-and-foremost on the legend, not history. "We never wanted to do a docu-drama, but something that was inspired by the legend," said Peter Schneider; "We decided right off that we weren’t going to make a historical document, but a love story, an entertainment that was mindful of historical reality," said Mike Gabriel (Rebello, 1995).
In this way, any criticisms could be waved off, something which Head of Story Tom Sito said damningly, "a lot of times when we discussed with historians who are authorities on what exactly happened, everybody would always say ‘we believe that’ or ‘our guess is’ or ‘our best estimate is that this happened’, so in other words... you don’t really know! And it’s like no one really knows." (Live from Central Park, 1995). At the risk of seeming alarmist, this feels incredibly disrespectful to historians and is highly reminiscent of comments I've heard from other productions ranging from Ridley Scott's Napoleon to Netflix's Life on Our Planet. I don't claim that the Disney artists were being malicious, but in an age of misinformation and deliberate bending of facts to support harmful causes, media-producers must do better to find a good balance of fact and fantasy lest they give the impression that historians "don't really know" anything.
There was additional pressure to build a strong romantic story around these two figures: award recognition! In 1991, Beauty and the Beast was nominated for the Academy Award for "Best Picture", a feat which no animated film had ever achieved (and this was at a time before the creation of the much-criticized "Best Animated Picture" category). Then Studio-Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg felt the pressure to recreate this success, and Pocahontas was the only film that was early enough in development to allow for such changes.
Writing for the screenplay began in January of 1993 under a single writer Carl Binder, but it took two additional writers Susannah Grant and Philip LaZebnik to come on four months later to help work on it. Within 18 months and after 14 drafts, the script was completed (Rebello, 1995). Clearly a lot of challenging work went into fine-tuning this soon-to-be masterpiece, and this incentive was so strong that much of the Disney artists famously went to work on Pocahontas in place of The Lion King; there was a sense that something special was being created here. Art director Michael Giaimo explained, "we feel that we’ve pushed a lot of boundaries in this film with regard to design and color. For one thing, we set to make the characters the brightest, punchiest, warmest elements on the screen by sublimating the backgrounds". This was essentially a return to stylistic-form in Disney animation that had been retired since the 1950s (Bossert, 2015). The animators and clean up artists were responsible for giving subtle emotional performances to the human cast - a choice that has often been criticized by animation-reviewers but was deliberate as the filmmakers really strove for serious storytelling in place of exaggerated comedy, which was reserved for the animal characters (Rebello, 1995).
Thus, Pocahontas was almost from the beginning conceived as a serious melodrama that could pull on enough heartstrings to allow the nice fine folks at the Academy Awards to give the Disney studio more recognition and, thus, more dollars. The problem with this approach is twofold: 1) a good story is good because it is created for its own sake, so any recognition it deserves is earned through honest artistry; 2) in choosing to focus solely on drama and emotional set-pieces at the expense of other factors, like comedy, you wind up with a rather disjointed film.
Case in point. As much as I enjoy the muted character animation of Meeko the raccoon, Flit the hummingbird, and Percy the pug, they are often super distracting in the story. Serious scenes are inter-cut by their antics to the point where I'm not sure just what to feel as I watch. A good example is Pocahontas' meeting with her father Powhatan at the start of the film: we are being introduced to her conflict between her own desires and that of her people, but throughout we see Meeko and Flit messing around. It becomes hard to take what I'm seeing seriously. Their ultimate purpose in the film was, according to the directors, to be a mirror-reflection on the human conflicts (Audio Commentary, 2005). This is all well and good, but it almost feels like an afterthought that the filmmakers added to give the youngest viewers extra help in understanding the film's message of tolerance and acceptance.
Concluding Thoughts
"I'll always be with you, forever." (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
The film ends with John Smith getting accidentally shot by Governor Ratcliffe, so he is forced to leave for England to get treated. Pocahontas and Smith reaffirm their love, even as she chooses to stay and mediate peace between her people and the settlers.
It is true that John Smith experienced a gun-wound, but it appears that it was more of a mishap: "he somehow blew up a bag of gunpowder while wearing it around his neck" (Mann, 2011 A). By all accounts, Matoaka had believed he had died from this (Kurin, 2013). From there, the true story is inevitably miserable. Once Smith left, conditions deteriorated further. Several times Matoaka was credited with negotiating truces between the two societies, releasing Native prisoners from the English and securing food and important messages during times of need (Hoxie, 1996). This did not stop the Jamestown colonists from kidnapping Matoaka in the spring of 1613, hoping to lessen Wahunsenacawh's increased wrath on the settlement, but to no avail. By now the Powhatan viewed the English with contempt, and a number of battles had occurred with heavy casualties. By the time some semblance of negotiation occurred, Matoaka would never be reunited with her people: despite already being married - to Kocoum, who was a real Patawomeck soldier - she was wed to widower John Rolfe, baptised into the Anglican faith, renamed Lady Rebecca, and sent to England where she was publicized as "la belle sauvage" and eventually died of an unknown illness. We have no concrete knowledge of how Matoaka felt during all this. Though the marriage of Rolfe and Matoaka let to a temporary ceasefire, in the end Tsenacomoco was devastated and disbanded, the Virginia Company ran out of funds due to the heavy loss of life and profits, and Jamestown would eventually fall into declining importance as the new capital of Williamsburg was founded (Mann, 2011 B; Hoxie, 1996). John Smith would go on several more voyages to America, writing extensively of his travels, while Governor Ratcliffe would be killed early on in the fighting at Jamestown, being captured and flayed alive by the Powhatans.
Again, I wouldn't expect a mainstream American animated family film to portray any of this, but I do think that there is a rich and important story to be told here. Writing as I am in 2025, where the horrifying legacy of colonialism and racism is being actively expunged by the government, I can't help but feel more strongly about Pocahontas and what it could have been.
On the one hand, by itself, the film is a visual masterpiece, with a beautiful artistry and a great soundtrack. It's entertaining enough, and I like the characters and the performance of the cast. It bluntly shows the goals of the settlers in colonizing the Americas and their prejudicial thoughts about the Indigenous peoples, and for that I have to praise it. On the other hand, the melodrama of the plot wears the movie down where more nuanced storytelling could have helped it. Because of the reliance of drama above all else, the film feels disjointed and difficult to engage with emotionally. As well, the filmmaker's over-reliance on mythmaking and stereotypes - like the "noble savage", the "ecological Indian", and the seeming lack of empathy towards Indigenous resistance - weigh heavily on my mind with each watch.
In a way, Pocahontas is a movie that feels made by committee, despite the apparent sincerely and heart that the filmmakers seemed to genuinely believe in. Mike Gabriel, in a heartfelt message, stated, "ignorance and bigotry are taught. If this song, this movie, makes one child begin to question anyone who teaches hatred and fosters misunderstanding, that will be a wonderful thing" (Rebello, 1995). Likewise, Russell Means argued, "I love this film, and anybody that nitpicks it and criticizes it for historical accuracy is not a child. Doesn’t have the same sensations and feelings as children, you know? That’s all I care about. The children are gonna see this. They’re the future" (Live in Central Park, 1995).
To me, this brings up an important point: at the end of the day, as much of an animation-nerd as I am, these films are created to reach the widest possible audience and a primary chunk of that audience are children. If there are key lessons about love, peace, living together, and understanding that are received by these children and then acted upon, then I think that is a net positive. Certainly me and my generation that grew up with the film gained such insights. But this cannot truly be all that children get from Pocahontas; the subject material and setting necessitate that children walk away from the film with certain inaccurate notions about Indigenous peoples and European colonization. If unchecked, then that is a net negative. Thankfully, there has seemed to be efforts from the public to ensure children are getting the right knowledge: following the film's release, attendance to the Jamestown historical site rose by 60% from the previous summers, with one interpreter stating that they've been "pleasantly surprised at how much parental concern there is for children getting more than was shown in the movie" (Edgerton & Jackson, 1996). Clearly, parents, guardians, and teachers introducing children to the film must open dialogues and do what they can to foster a healthy understanding about the birth of the modern world and their relationship to other peoples.
I will leave you all with this. Shirley “Little Dove” McGowan was a Pamunkey consultant for the film, but only briefly. She recounts the following: "I was honored to be asked by them... but I wasn't at the studio two hours before I began to make clear my objections to what they were doing... they had said that the film would be historically accurate. I soon found that it wasn't to be. I wish my name wasn't on it. I wish Pocahontas' name wasn't on it." When faced with the finished product, her "heart sorrowed" (Edgerton & Jackson, 1996). As a descendant of Tsenacomoco, I can only wonder what she experienced at Disney and what went through her head as she watched the film.
Indigenous Americans have known since first contact that depictions of themselves and their lifeways have nearly always been tainted by stereotypes and myths perpetuated by colonizing powers. For every step forward, there seem to be ten steps taken back. Pocahontas, much as we may like about it, has followed this history likewise: it is a film about Native Americans created by white people which has overtaken much of the contemporary discussion about the real Matoaka and her life. In an age where now, finally, Indigenous groups are creating their own media, this history is changing. Will we see Pocahontas again in a new light? Or, perhaps, it is better that she finally rest in peace.
Book References
Kaj Birket-Smith - Primitive Man and His Ways: “Powhatan and Pamlico” (Mentor Books, 1960)
Dave Bossert - Walt Disney Records: The Legacy Collection - Pocahontas (Walt Disney Records, 2015)
John. H. Elliott - Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (Yale University Press, 2006)
Christopher Finch - The Art of Walt Disney: from Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms (Harry N. Abrams Incorporated, 1995)
Pekka Hämäläinen - Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2022)
Frederick E. Hoxie, et al. - Encyclopedia of North American Indians (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996)
Richard Kurin - The Smithsonian’s History of America in 101 Objects (The Penguin Press, 2013)
Charles C. Mann - 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, 2nd Ed. (Vintage Books, 2011 A)
Charles C. Mann - 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (Vintage Books, 2011 B)
Stephen Rebello - The Art of Pocahontas (Hyperion, 1995)
Media References
Audio Commentary - Pocahontas 10th Anniversary Edition DVD (2005)
Live from Central Park: Disney’s Pocahontas - the Premiere in the Park (1995) LINK
The Making of Pocahontas: A Legend Comes to Life (1995) LINK
Paper and Article Citations
Daily Press - “History Coming to Life in Disney Animation” (1993)
Gary Edgerton & Kathy Merlock Jackson, 1996. Redesigning Pocahontas: Disney, the “White Man's Indian,” and the Marketing of Dreams (Journal of Popular Film and Television)
Carrie Rickey - “Disney's 'Pocahontas': Is It Fact Or Fiction? What Did She Wear? Did She Style Her Hair? Were She And John Smith A Pair?” (Philly, 1995)
Race: Understanding Human Diversity - Part 3 (Finale)
Representations of the Out-of-Africa Expansion for Homo sapiens; A shows a map of early Eurasian individuals, B breaks down these movements temporally, showing known gene flow with other human species (from Bergström, et al. 2021)
In the previous post, I discussed a number of examples of human physical and genetic traits and how they came to be. Features like skin color, hair texture, skull shape, etc were all either the products of adaptation to environment or genetic drift. In prehistory, human numbers were small and it was easier for mutations to take hold and spread across demes and populations. That said, many of these traits are underpinned by multiple genes, and there is no evidence that they all necessarily correlate with each other nor that they can serve as specific markers for human races.
The most accurate way to understand how our current human diversity came to be is through genomics, and the best way to see that is by tracking the migrations and expansions of people as far back as we can. In the traditional understanding of human diversity, biological anthropologists argued that races originated from ancestral stocks that spread across the earth and, while they were not necessarily immune to interbreeding, nonetheless remained distinct until the last 500 years or so when colonialism "connected the world together".
The last few decades of modern genetics has shattered this view. Humanity has been mobile and promiscuous from the very beginning, with the boundaries between groups often considered "races" to have been broken time and time again. We now understand that unique physical traits not only are spread by migration, but that migrating groups change as well following settlement onto new lands.
As a recent review paper explains: "Generally, the evidence suggests that selective pressures and adaptations occur at the individual, family, and community levels. Consequently, across levels there are negotiations, interactions, and feedbacks that shape migration outcomes and the trajectory of evolutionary change" (Bell, 2023).
So let's track the journey of humanity and show what modern research has to say about where we all came from...
Species Origins
A computer model showing evidence of deep connections and separations predating the origin of Homo sapiens (from Cousins, et al. 2025)
Our species, Homo sapiens, shares a recent common ancestor with two extinct species, the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and the Denisovans (currently unclassified, perhaps Homo longi?). Morphological and genetic studies are not in ready agreement as to when these species diverged from each other; it could be as recent as ~550 thousand years ago or over a million years ago (Liu, et al. 2021; Feng, et al. 2025). It is also unclear as to where this divergence occurred. It may very well have been in Africa, but alternative locations have been suggested for Southwest Eurasia (Reich, 2018).
The Middle Pleistocene fossil record in these regions nonetheless records a great diversity in human remains. Individuals from sites like Jebel Irhoud, Omo, Florisbad, Herto, and Skhul show a mosaic of features between earlier hominins and modern Homo sapiens (Mounier & Lahr, 2019). This has suggested to many paleoanthropologists in the last few years that we may need to model the origin of Homo sapiens as "multiregional", like a braided-stream of ancestry where populations diverged, merged, and diverged again, with some of these events eventually giving rise to the last common ancestor of modern humans as we would recognize them (Bergström, et al. 2021). That is to say, humans with a globular cranium, a bony chin, and a narrow, less-flared pelvis. Computer modeling utilizing sequenced genomes has indicated a possibility that our direct ancestors may have intermingled at least twice (Cousins, et al. 2025) and constituted "weakly structured" stem-groups which did not exist as "well-defined and stable populations over hundreds of thousands of years" (Ragsdale, et al. 2023). These groups also seem to include the ancestors of the Neanderthals and Denisovans, further demonstrating how closely-related we are to these relatives of ours.
Homo sapiens in Africa
Two charts showing the degree of relatedness and admixture between Indigenous African peoples (from Fan, et al. 2023)
Once our species emerged between 300 and 200 thousand years ago, fossil and genetic evidence shows that we had a widespread distribution across the African continent. Multiple times had populations moved, met, admixed (interbred), and went their separate ways, so that it has become difficult to pinpoint the "roots" of ancestry, as is expected from multiregional evolution.
Nonetheless, there do appear to be some connections that can be made between the ancestors of Indigenous African groups. The Khoesan-speaking peoples of Southern Africa (e.g. the Ju|’hoansi and the !Xoo, whose language includes "click-consonants") appear to share significant amounts of ancestry with Central African rainforest peoples (e.g. the Mbuti and the Aka), with evidence of divergence between 285 and 150 thousand years ago (Fan, et al. 2023). This makes their ancestors part of a "sister-clade", a term from cladistics designating two closely-related groups. That said, these groups did not remain isolated for very long, quite the contrary! For example, Khoesan-speaking groups in East Africa (e.g. the Hadzabe and the Sandawe) appear to share significant amounts of ancestry with Southern African Khoesan, 71% between the Hadzabe and SA Khoesan and 38% between the Sandawe and SA Khoesan; the remaining ancestry in these groups is shared with other East African populations (Fan, et al. 2023). There is also evidence that the ancestors of the South African Khoesan may have originally emerged in East Africa and subsequently expanded their range southward, all the while contributing geneflow to their northern relatives within the last 12 thousand years.
Genetic modelling of African ancestries, with an emphasis on West African groups (from Lipson, et al. 2020)
By 200 thousand years ago at least three more ancestral groups were present across Africa alongside the Khoesan-speaking and Central African groups (Liu, et al. 2021).
The third group is a mysterious genetically-unsampled population that has been detected in the ancestries of both living West Africans and an ancient 4,500 year old individual from Mota, Ethiopia. Archaeologists have yet to have unearthed or extracted ancientDNA from an individual who hailed from this group, nor is there an exact idea of where these people originally lived (Llorente, et al. 2015).
The fourth group represents the ancestral populations of Northern Africa. These peoples seem to have shared ties with both the ancestors of living West and East African peoples, and have bestowed a significant amount of DNA to a 15 thousand-year-old individual who was excavated from the site of Taforalt in Morocco (Loosdrecht, et al. 2018). North Africa has been a bit of a blind-spot in ancientDNA studies, but a growing picture is emerging for a long-standing regional continuity between the earliest Homo sapiens in the region and the late Pleistocene peoples of the Iberomaurusian culture (Bergmann, et al. 2022; Röding, et al. 2022).
The fifth group is of strong relevance as it contributed the majority of the remaining ancestry for living Indigenous African peoples as well as the group that emerged in Eurasia ~80 thousand years ago (Liu, et al. 2021; Lipson, et al. 2020). Nonetheless, it should be clear that Africa was home to a great diversity of early peoples which evolved over time through a fluid, mosaic process in which some groups emerged, admixed, and either stayed around or became subsumed by other groups. It's a fool's errand to try to find races here.
This fifth group appears to have undergone an evolutionary radiation between 80 and 60 thousand years ago, likely in East Africa (Lipson, et al. 2020). One population spread westward and gave rise to the majority of ancestry in living Niger-Congo-speaking peoples, and appears to have effectively subsumed or pushed-out earlier populations related to both the Central African rainforest peoples and the 8-3,000 year old individuals at Shum Laka, Cameroon (Lipson, et al. 2020). From there, these groups underwent several divergences and by 6-4,000 years ago the Bantu-speaking agriculturalists had emerged in present-day Cameroon. This group would go-on to spread and settle across much of Africa south of the Sahara, today making up ~30% of the continent's population (Fortes-Lima, et al. 2023). Another population stayed in East Africa and gave rise to various agro-pastoralist (farming & herding) groups that spoke Nilo-Saharan and Afroasiatic languages: these two populations, in turn, seem to have diverged from each other between 35 and 22 thousand years ago (Fan, et al. 2023). Throughout these movements, older populations responded in various ways, through coexistence, conflict, genetic admixture, or "voting with their feet".
"Out of Africa"
Highly-simplified representation of ancestral groups following the ~80 KYA 'Out of Africa' expansion (from Vallini, et al. 2024)
Related to this fifth group is a population which has subsequently gone on to populate the rest of the planet. Known to ancientDNA researchers as "Non-Africans", they would have remained African peoples or at least have been close-neighbors when they first emerged. This is evidenced by the signature of a currently-unknown population known as Basal Eurasians, who represent the oldest known genetic split from the Non-African lineage (Reich, 2018). It is unclear just where the Basal Eurasians emerged, and when, but their genes have been found in both ancient and present-day Europeans and peoples in the Middle East and North Africa, and this hints that they were a widespread and long-lived group.
Around 80 thousand years ago there is greater evidence of a sustained presence of Homo sapiens in Southwest Asia, suggesting that an Out of Africa (henceforth OoA) population expansion has begun. Genetics picks up a significant movement of peoples between 70 and 60 thousand years ago, but it isn't until about 45 thousand years ago that large waves of people began to spread further into Europe and Asia. Various studies have proposed a "hub" in either the Arabian Peninsula or the Iranian Plateau where the OoA population settled for several thousand years, gaining genetic mutations which provided adaptational benefits for the new, cooler environment (Tobler, et al. 2023; Vallini, et al. 2024).
From there, we find traces of a smaller population expansion in the remains of two individuals, one found at Zlatý kůň, Czechia and another at Ranis, Germany, both dated to over 45 thousand years ago. This group of people does not seem to have contributed ancestry to anyone in Europe today and may represent a short-lived population in the region (Vallini, et al. 2022). Their genetic signature contains evidence of recent interbreeding with Neanderthals, and in fact has been tied to a significant admixture event that occurred between 49 and 45 thousand years ago with the OoA group and a Neanderthal population (Sümer, et al. 2024). This event has been forever sealed in the genomes of most humans today who are not of Indigenous African ancestry: as much as 2–3% of the genome comes from Neanderthals. This is an area of active research, and there is evidence of both positive and negative selection for various genes shared with us from this species of human (Iasi, et al. 2024).
While there is evidence from the archaeological record of other - sometimes substantially older - groups of Homo sapiens in Eurasia and Oceania (e.g. at Fuyan Cave in China ~100 KYA and Madjedbebe in Australia ~65 KYA), these have not yet been tied to any genetic lineages and may represent groups which contributed little if any ancestry to living peoples (Bergström, et al. 2021). As well, earlier research which seemed to find genetic evidence of an older pre-OoA movement of peoples that reached New Guinea has since been called into question (Mondal, et al. 2025).
West Eurasia
Genetic evidence of three separate sweeps into Eurasia between 45 and 38 thousand years ago (from Vallini, et al. 2022)
By 45 thousand years ago, there was a significant split from the OoA population into two groups. One population ventured eastwards towards Southeast Asia, while the other migrated westwards towards Europe. Both groups utilized Initial Upper Palaeolithic technologies, consisting of core, blade, and flaking stone tools constructed from Levallois techniques (Bellwood, 2022). The ancientDNA from several individuals of this group have been uncovered, including from Ust’-Ishim from Russia ~45 thousand years ago, Oase1 from Romania ~40 thousand years ago, Bacho Kiro from Bulgaria ~46-43 thousand years ago, and Tianyuan from China ~40 thousand years ago. They are all quite closely related to each other, even separated by such distances, suggesting that admixture between Western and Eastern Eurasian groups was maintained (Hajdinjak, et al. 2021). However, though the members of the Eastern groups survived on their own for successive generations, members of the Western groups would eventually be subsumed by a second wave of migrants around 38 thousand years ago (Vallini, et al. 2022). This Upper Paleolithic expansion, the first to feature blade tools, characterized what ancientDNA researchers call the European Early Modern Humans throughout western and eastern Europe and the Ancient North Eurasians in Siberia. We'll look at the former first.
The genetic history of glacial and post-glacial Europe (from Posth, et al. 2023)
A recent paper has elucidated the subsequent genetic history of European populations through the Paleolithic or Forager Age (Posth, et al. 2023). In essence, following the Upper Paleolithic expansion ~38 thousand years ago, Europe was populated by two groups of differing ancestries, represented by the western "GoyetQ116-1" population and the eastern "Kostenki" population. By 33 thousand years ago, these groups had begun admixing and gave rise to the "Fournol" population which utilized the Gravettian culture, well-known for their portable Venus figurines. Through the Last Glacial Maximum between 19-17 thousand years ago, a new ancestry emerged in southeast Europe which shared ancestry with the older Bacho Kiro peoples: the "Villabruna cluster". These peoples then met and admixed with descendants of the Gravettians which survived the intense cold by retreated southward to the Mediterranean. Eventually, by the end of the glacial period around 11 thousand years ago, the hunter-gatherer population of Europe had effectively homogenized through constant admixture both within and without. There was a Western Hunter Gatherer or "Oberkassel" ancestry that can be distinguished from an Eastern Hunter Gatherer or "Sidelkino" ancestry which originated from the Ancent North Eurasians (Posth, et al. 2023).
Spread of Ancient North Eurasian ancestry (naturalearthdata.com CC BY-SA 4.0)
The Ancient North Eurasians diverged from the Early Europeans around 39 thousand years ago, and are well-represented in the archaeological record by the peoples of the Mal'ta–Buret' culture, who inhabited the lands west of Lake Baikal in Siberia around 24 thousand years ago (Reich, 2018). Clearly, the nomadic movements of the Ancient North Eurasians were widespread and successful. Though as a population they no longer exist - surviving as late as 4,000 years ago in the Tarim Basin (Zhang, et al. 2021) - they seem to have frequently interbred with almost every group they met and thus contributed significant ancestry to Native Americans, Paleosiberians, Ugaric-speaking peoples, and the descendants of the Indo-European-speaking Yamnaya culture as far apart as Spain and India. Yet another example of the common threads uniting seemingly disparate groups.
Farmers and Riders in the West
Levels of admixture in Middle Eastern and North African peoples (from Serradell, et al. 2024)
As mentioned previously, genetic studies have been few and far between in North Africa as well as Southwest Asia (the Middle East), but recent work has began to fill in some gaps in our knowledge.
A 2024 paper using modern genomes has discovered a series of "soft-splits" or non-rigid genetic divergences for the ancestral populations of the Amazigh and Arab peoples (Serradell, et al. 2024). In essence, both groups belong to the Western Eurasian group and are close relatives of living Europeans but throughout their histories have incorporated extensive geneflow from both Africa and Europe over the last 18 thousand years or so. The Amazigh peoples were the first to diverge and constitute a return to the African continent where they today remain across much of North Africa; incidentally, it is generally understood that the Amazigh have some relation towards the ancestry of the Guanches of the Canary Islands (Serrano, et al. 2023). The Arabs, in contrast, share a closer relationship with European peoples and diverged around 8.6 thousand years ago. The Islamic expansions of the early Postclassical Period would, in turn, spread Arabic ancestry across Africa and Eurasia.
AncientDNA from the late glacial and postglacial periods seem to add further evidence that Southwest Asia was a hub of genetic diversity, with evidence of several groups living in relative isolation prior to the origins of agriculture around 11 thousand years ago (Reich, 2018). In particular, populations living in Anatolia (modern-day Türkiye), the Zagros Mountains of Iran, and the Levant (e.g. Palestine & Syria) share differing levels of ancestry between each other. Ancient Anatolians show evidence of admixture with Early European Hunter Gatherers, while early peoples of the Zagros show more admixture with Caucasus Hunter Gatherers (Chataigner, et al. 2024), and Levantine peoples show high levels of shared ancestry with East and North Africans.
As agricultural practices began to take root, these groups began to come into contact with each other so that, for example, farmers in Iran constituted ancestry from both Anatolian and Iranian foragers (Shinde, et al. 2019). As well, farmers began to spread to new lands in such numbers that they would significantly change the genetic landscapes wherever they went. Anatolian farmers began to spread into Europe around 9,000 to 8,500 thousand years ago, and over a period of just 3,000 years they had near-fully spread across Europe. These people, now known as "Early European Farmers", would not only end the lifeways of the older foraging groups but effectively admix them out of existence through a genetic sweep (Tsoupas, et al. 2025). According to geneticist David Reich: "Today, Early European Farmer ancestry remains widespread throughout Europe, ranging from about 60% near the Mediterranean Sea (with a peak of 65% in the island of Sardinia) and diminishing northwards to about 10% in northern Scandinavia. According to more recent studies the highest Early European Farmer ancestry found in modern Europeans ranges from 67% to over 80% in modern Sardinians, Italians, Greeks and Iberians, with the lowest ancestry found in modern Europeans ranging from 35% to 40% in modern Finns, Lithuanians and Latvians" (Reich, 2018).
One model for the spread of the Western Steppe Herders (Koba-chan, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Then, as if that weren't enough, another genetic sweep would overtake Europe. Around 5,300 years ago, the Yamnaya culture emerged on the Pontic–Caspian steppe from a combination of Caucasus, Eastern European forager, Ancient North Eurasian, and Southwest Asian farmer admixture (Lazaridis, et al. 2022). They are genetically and archaeologically well-documented as kurgan (burial-mound)-building bronze age horse-back riders and they are widely viewed as the originators of the Indo-European language family (Reich, 2018). Around 4,900 years ago, these "Western Steppe Herders" began to expand across Eurasia, moving westward into Europe, eastward into Siberia, and southward into present-day Pakistan and India. Genetic evidence suggests that, at least for Europe, the sweep commenced over a thousand-year period (Allentoft, et al. 2024), and that it involved a complex process which effectively subsumed most of the populations Early European Farmers in all but a few regions: a widely-studied example are the Basques, who have maintained genetic isolation since the European Iron Age and speak a non-Indo-European language (Flores-Bello, et al. 2021).
Similar stories played out across Africa and Eurasia. Levantine agriculturalists contributed genetic ancestry to Northern and Eastern African groups over 3,000 years ago, some of which was picked up by Khoesan pastoralists who migrated with their herds into Southern Africa (Liu, et al. 2021). One farming population distantly related to ancient Iranians spread into South Asia and contributed substantial ancestry to the founders of the Indus Valley cities (Shinde, et al. 2019). Likewise with Europe, present-day India and Pakistan experienced several genetic incursions over millennia (Narasimhan, et al. 2019; Reich, 2018). It's earliest Eastern Eurasian ancestry will be illuminated more in the next section, but it is worth mentioning that prior to 9,000 years ago the subcontinent was primarily inhabited by hunter-gatherer groups known to ancientDNA researchers as "Ancient Ancestral South Indians". When the Iranian-related farmers arrived they quickly spread agriculture throughout the region, and some researchers suspect that the Dravidian-speaking peoples derive much of their ancestry from admixture with the Indigenous groups there (Bellwood, 2022): genetically, they are known as "Ancestral South Indians". The Iranian-related farmers also spread northward into the Hindu Kush, where they eventually came into contact with the expanding Western Steppe Herders: these, in turn, are known as "Ancestral North Indians". From there, between 4,000 and 3,000 years ago, these two ancestral groups converged, with the Ancestral North Indians contributing anywhere from 39–71% ancestry in living South Asian groups today (Reich, et al. 2009).
East Eurasia
Simplified overview of the earliest diverging populations in Eurasia (from Yang, 2022)
Let's back-track a bit to the OoA movements around 45 thousand years ago. Parallel with the western Eurasian expansion, there was an eastern Eurasian movement of Initial Upper Paleolithic peoples as well. Unlike the former, the peoples of the east were not swept over genetically by a second wave but instead diversified into at least three lineages: the aforementioned Ancient Ancestral South Indians, the Australasians, and the Ancient East and Southeast Asians (Yang, 2022).
As in Southwest Asia and Europe, where Homo sapiens encountered and admixed with Neanderthals, so too did Homo sapiens in Eastern Eurasia encounter Denisovans. In contrast, however, there appears to be evidence of multiple admixture events at different times and with several highly-divergent Denisovan populations (Ongaro & Huerta-Sanchez, 2024). One event likely occurred in Southeast Asia with the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians, Negritos (a term for often small-statured Indigenous peoples in Island Southeast Asia), and the peoples of New Guinea and the Melanesian Islands, where today all these groups possess around 5% Denisovan DNA in their genome. Other events occurred on the mainland with the ancestors of South Asians, East Asians, and Native Americas, who possess 0.2% Denisovan DNA in their genomes. The contrast between the two can be explained by successive genetic sweeps with new Homo sapiens groups which have smothered the Denisovan signal.
The genetic signal for the Ancient Ancestral South Indians is very small and has only been recovered from a few individuals throughout South Asia who lived between 5,000 and 1,500 years ago (Yang, 2022). Nevertheless, they appear to have had a widespread presence on the subcontinent prior to the arrival of agriculturalists. Genetic comparisons with some isolated ethnic groups have been made, showing that the Adivasi of Sri Lanka share over half their genomes with AASI ancestry (Aragon, et al. 2025), while the Andamanese Islanders - once thought to represent members of this group - are now known to be only distant relations (Yang, 2022).
The Australasian group will be discussed in the next section, but by far the group with the largest and most complex population history are the Ancient East and Southeast Asians, who prior to 40 thousand years ago were widespread across the mainland and represented two genetic lineages.
Across Southeast Asia - which, during glacial periods, was not a series of islands but an extension of the mainland - was the "Hòabìnhian" group. These peoples utilized flaked cobble tools and inhabited regions as far apart at Yunnan, China and Laos; as well they share a common ancestry with the Andamanese Islanders. Further north along a band stretchin from South Asia to mainland Southeast Asia was a "Yunnan" group which represented the primary ancestral population of the Austroasiatic-speaking peoples like the Vietnamese and Khmer (Tagore, et al. 2021). Still further north was the "Tianyuan" group, well represented by individuals recovered from northern China 40-33 thousand years ago (specifically AR33K and Tianyuan). These groups formed the majority of Eastern Eurasian genetic diversity, alongside the eastern-most Ancient North Eurasian populations known to geneticists as "Ancient Northern Siberians" and represented by the 31 thousand-year-old individuals from the Yana River in Russia.
Even before the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, these different ancestries were admixing and diversifying. An individual found at Salkhit, Mongolia was found to share ancestry with both the Tianyuan group and Ancient Northern Siberians (Mao, et al. 2021). From 39 thousand years ago, the Tianyuan group began to diverge into a number of different populations, with one group crossing into the Japanese archipelago by at least 25 thousand years ago to become the ancestors of the Jōmon people, and another more mysterious group entering the Tibetan Plateau by 21 thousand years ago (Zhao, et al. 2009). From there, the genetic trail shows a large-split between "Northern East Asians" and "Southern East Asians" between 28 and 22 thousand years ago (Mao, et al. 2021). These source populations would effectively contribute the majority of subsequent ancestry to living East and Southeast Asian peoples, and eventually subsume many of the older groups through genetic sweeps much as had occurred in Europe.
A key admixture event occurred around 25 to 20 thousand years ago between some Ancient Northern Siberians and a group of Northern East Asians which gave rise to the "Ancient Paleosiberians", who are represented by two individuals: Kolyma1 and Ust-Kyakhta-3, who lived between 14 and 9,000 years ago. This group would give rise to both "Modern Paleosiberians" and the Amerindians or Native Americans (Yang, 2022). I'll consider the history of Indigenous Americans in a later section, but the Modern Paleosiberians will be of interest here. Over time, this group spread over a wide-range of northern Eurasia, contributing ancestry to the Chukotko-Kamchatkan-speaking peoples of far-eastern Siberia (e.g. the Chukchi and the Koryak), the Nivkh or Gilyak peoples of Sakhalin Island and mainland Russia, the Yeniseian-speaking peoples of central Siberia, and even the Uralic-speaking peoples, who spread far westward from Yakutia into northeast Europe around 4,500 years ago, today represented by the Finns, Hungarians, Estonians, and Sámi (Zeng, et al. 2025). Much of the earlier European hunter-gatherer ancestry in Finno-Scandinavia would be subsumed by this last group. Likewise in Siberia, the Paleosiberians would effectively replace the earlier Ancient Northern Siberian peoples (Sikora, et al. 2019).
Farmers and Riders in the East
Eastern Eurasia over the last 15,000 years (from Yang, 2022)
There is a very complex history of genetic exchange and migrations following the end of the last Ice Age. Both the Northern and Southern East Asians experienced continued diversification as their populations swept over the region.
By 14 thousand years ago, one group of Northern East Asians emerged in the Amur region between present-day Russia and China, and was found to have contributed to the genomes of the Ancient Paleosiberians as well. This Amur group (sometimes referred to as "Neosiberians") interacted widely with other populations in Mongolia and the Central Asian steppes from 10 thousand years ago, and underwent a large-scale population expansion which settled across much of Siberia and eventually overtook the Paleosiberian peoples from much of their lands (Wong, et al. 2017; Sikora, et al. 2019). It is widely believed that this genetic expansion was accompanied by the spread of the Altaic or Transeurasian language family, including speakers of the Tungusic (e.g. the Evenks and Manchus), Mongolic, and Turkic languages. Interactions with Indo-European-speaking groups would facilitate the introduction of horses and allow for further migrations such as those documented in recorded history.
In the Yellow River region of China, another group of Northern East Asians with close affinities to the Amur group was settling down into village communities. By 10 thousand years ago they had developed millet-based agriculture and were likely speaking a proto-form of Sino-Tibetan. As farmers have often done, they interacted widely with neighboring peoples and expanded their populations far and wide. There is evidence that one group migrated westward into the Tibetan Plateau around 5,800 years ago, acquiring an adaptive gene towards life in high mountains which had been distantly inherited from Denisovans (Xiong, et al. 2025). We know from the archaeological record that farming also originated along the Yangtze River region, south of the Yellow River, where the people there developed rice-based agriculture: until recently ancientDNA from this region was unknown. A recent 2025 paper found that these peoples represented a distinct but closely-related group to the Yellow River populations, hinting at past admixture events (Xiong, et al. 2025). The Han Chinese, today the largest ethnic group in the region, descend from admixture between groups along the lower Yellow River and the northern Yangtze River (Reich, 2018).
It has been argued that the Korean and Japanese languages also belong to the Transeurasian family, but the ancestries of these peoples seem to be as complex as others in East Asia. The modern Japanese, for example, have been shown to constitute a tripartate ancestry from the Indigenous Jōmon people, a mysterious Northern East Asian "West Liao" people which adopted agriculture and entered the archipelago from the Korean Peninsula, and a later agriculturalist influx related to the Yellow River group (Cooke, et al. 2021). Modern Koreans show close affinity to both the West Liao people and the Amur group (Sun, et al. 2023).
Some of the ancestry of the Yangtze River farmers could be traced to the Southern East Asian populations, which until now have remained undiscussed. Between 8,000 and 6,000 years ago, a number of groups had emerged from this ancestral population, including the "Guangxi/Longlin" group in southern China which is not detected in any of the living peoples in that region today (represented by the "Red Deer Cave People"), and the "Fujian" group which seems to have also lived ancestrally in southern China but played a far more long-lasting role in world history.
The spread of rice farmers into Southeast Asia (Obsidian Soul, Public Domain)
The peopling of Southeast Asia involved a multitude of southward population expansions involving hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists. The first movements involved groups related to the ancestors of Indigenous peoples in Australia and Melanesia, these being the aformentioned Hòabìnhian peoples. Some ethnic groups today, like the Punan of Borneo, show evidence of genetic continuity with these first groups (Kusuma, et al. 2023), while others like the Negritos of Malaysia show connections to the Hòabìnhian as well as Northern East Asian farmers (Aghakhanian, et al. 2022). The peoples of the Philippines consist of ancestry from at least four main movements of people into the islands, some within the last 15 thousand years (Larena, et al. 2021).
In fact, it seems that within the last 5,000 years or so, there was a large influx of agriculturalists which seems to have largely overtaken much of the original hunter gatherer populations in Southeast Asia, isolating many of them - in the case of, say, the Negritos - or fragmenting their communities - in the case of the Austroasiatic-speaking peoples (Yang, 2022; Ma, et al. 2024). The majority of this ancestry seems to descend primarily from the admixed Yellow/Yangtze farmers and the Fijian group (thus, constituting both Northern and Southern East Asian ancestries). Linguistically, these movements have been linked with the origin and spread of the Kra-Dai (e.g. Tai and Lao-speakers), Hmong-Mien, and Austronesian language families (Yang, et al. 2020).
Australia and the Pacific Islands
The peopling of Australia and Melanesia, with representative archaeological sites and hypothetical movements (from Tobler, et al. 2017)
A period of time between 49 and 45 thousand years marks the presence of Homo sapiens on the continent of Sahul, a landmass consisting of Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea which periodically emerged during periods of low-sea levels during the last Ice Age. There are a number of earlier sites known - some going back as far as 65 thousand years - but it is unclear how accurate some of these dates are or whether they represent genetically unsampled groups which did not contribute to living Indigenous populations.
Evidence from the DNA of Aboriginal Australians confirms a continuous presence on the continent since the first settlement, following a single rapid migration from Southeast Asia that quickly reached all parts of the landmass (Tobler, et al. 2017). Even while Sahul was in existence, geneflow between Australian and New Guinean groups seems to have ceased between 40 and 25 thousand years ago - corresponding to the formation of the now-extinct Super-Lake Carpentaria - and from that time the two regions experienced marked lineage diversification (Malaspinas, et al. 2016). One group, associated with the Pama–Nyungan language family, appears to have emerged and spread across much of Australia within the last 10 thousand years or so.
In New Guinea, populations maintained genetic continuity as well, while also expanding into neighboring islands. The Bismark and Solomon Islands were settled between 43 and 39 thousand years ago, while one westward expansion settled on the island of Sulawesi and admixed with a Hòabìnhian-related group, becoming the ancestors of the Toalean peoples (Carlhoff, et al. 2021).
Movements of South Pacific wayfinders (from Ioannidis, et al. 2021)
Much more recent in time was the settlement of the remaining Pacific islands. Genetic studies have, by now, seemingly cemented an understanding that the very distant origins of the Polynesians lie in Taiwan and mainland China. Austronesian-speaking peoples inhabited southeastern coastal China and Taiwan between 6,000 and 5,000 years ago, consisting of genetic ancestry from Yangtze River farmers and Taiwanese hunter gatherers (Xiong, et al. 2025). Between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago, this population began a continuous southern expansion through the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Some of the groups settled there and show evidence of admixture with Negritos and Austroasiatic-speaking peoples (Lipson, et al. 2014), while others sailed through the Indian Ocean and settled on Madagascar and the East African coast.
One group seems to have largely bypassed New Guinea (by then having flourishing agricultural communities in the highlands) and settled on the Bismark and Solomon Islands around 3,600 years ago. From there, the archaeological record tells us, emerged the Lapita Culture, which pioneered the design for a double-hulled outrigger canoe which could traverse more open waters (Bellwood, 2022). Just 100 years later, groups had managed to travel north to the Mariana Islands, (Pugach, et al. 2020). Between 3,200 and 2,200 years ago other members of the Lapita traveled further east, reaching as far as Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, after which further voyages ceased for over 1,500 years: it was during this period that a recognizable Polynesian population formed. There is genetic evidence of distant contact with the peoples of New Guinea, and it appears that some individuals from that region traveled to the South Pacific on later voyages (Reich, 2018).
Beginning in the 800s AD - as the European Middle Ages were underway - there was a second great pulse of Polynesian expansion across the rest of the Pacific islands (Ioannidis, et al. 2021). The Southern Cook Islands, the Australis, the Society Islands, the Tuamotu Archipelago, and the Marquesas were all settled over a period of a few hundred years. The distant island chains of Hawaiʻi, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and Aotearoa (New Zealand) were all settled by the 1250s. In all this time, the ingenuity of the wayfinders ensured continuious contact between several island groups, as evidenced, for example, by the Tuʻi Tonga Empire whose influence spread as far as the Tuvaluan Archipelago by the 1500s (a distance of over 1,300 kilometers). There is even evidence of contact with South America: around 1200, a group of Polynesian wayfinders reached a region roughly in present-day Colombia, admixed somehow with the Amerindians there, and transferred this ancestry to the South Pacific, long before the rest of the far eastern islands had been discovered (Ioannidis, et al. 2020).
The Americas
The first peopling of the Americas (from Willerslev & Meltzer, 2021)
As mentioned earlier, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas can ultimately trace their ancestry to an admixture event between 25 and 20 thousand years ago between Ancient Northern Siberians and a group of Northern East Asians (Yang, 2022). The region of Beringia was dry cold land around this time and seems to have supported a small but genetically-rich group of people by 18 thousand years ago, which had begun to rapidly diverge into a number of lineages which became the founding populations of the Amerindians (Moreno-Mayar, et al. 2018). One of these, termed the "Ancient Beringians" (represented by two 11,500-year-old children from Alaska), seem to have around until at least 9,000 years ago but may have been genetically subsumed by other peoples. Three other groups, currently mysterious but present in the genomes of some Central and South American Indigenous groups, seem to have also diverged around this time: "Unsampled Population A" was detected in a few living Mixe peoples, "Unsampled Population A2" was detected in northern and central Mexico (Villa-Islas, et al. 2023), while "Population Y" has been found across Amazonia and the Andes in individuals up to 10 thousand years old, but curiously retains genetic signals from both the ancient Tianyuan group and the ancestors of Australasian peoples (Ferraz, et al. 2023). There has been much controversy about Population Y, with some researchers speculating an alternative model that this group represents an earlier entry into the Americas (Raff, 2022). Further research has revealed more deeply-divergent lineages: a 5,600-year-old individual from Big Bar Lake, British Columbia and sampled DNA from historic & living members of the Blackfoot Confederacy date to this period of rapid divergence (First Rider, et al. 2024).
At present, all other Amerindian peoples sampled descend from two sister-lineages that emerged on the North American continent between 17,500 and 14,600 years ago (Moreno-Mayar, et al. 2018). One, dubbed the "Northern Native Americans" were the primary source of ancestry to the Algonquian, Salishan, Tsimshian, and Na-Dené-speaking peoples, while the "Southern Native Americans" are represented across both American continents, including in individuals associated with the widespread Paleolithic Clovis culture (Raff, 2022).
The spread of peoples across the Americas during the end of the last Ice Age proceeded with a rapidity matched by earlier times and places. Tierra del Fuego, the southern tip of South America, was settled twice by 14 thousand years ago by groups who became adapted to marine and terrestrial resources (Balentine, et al. 2022). There is even evidence of not only north-to-south migrations but south-to-north migrations as well, with genetic evidence of an Atlantic coastal expansion which settled in northeastern Brazil (Dos Santos, et al. 2022).
Movements of peoples within the Americas over the last 11,000 years (from Willerslev & Meltzer, 2021)
Some groups in the Americas retained a long-standing regional continuity in their homelands: a recent study found that the people of central Mexico - the region of Teotihuacan and the Aztec Triple Alliance - share the same genetic ancestry from pre-Hispanic to modern times with no evidence of outside genetic infusion (Villa-Islas, et al. 2023). Other groups show evidence of admixture and further population expansions: Members of the "Unsampled Population A" group expanded from Central America through much of South America from 9,000 years ago, subsuming the earlier Clovis-related genetic signatures (Raff, 2022). DNA from peoples of the California Channel Islands has been found in Andean individuals, pointing to an admixture event after 5,000 years ago (Posth, et al. 2018). The genetic blueprint of the Maya region seems to have been influenced by the movement of a group related to the Chibchan-speaking peoples of southern Central America and present-day Colombia after 5,600 years ago (Kennett, et al. 2022). In the Andes, the site of Machu Picchu has revealed that the Inka Empire consisted of a retainer community of peoples from as far as Amazonia (Salazar, et al. 2023). The peopling of the Caribbean likewise proceeded in multiple waves, with earlier hunter gatherer groups who arrived 5,000 years ago eventually being subsumed by agriculturalists - the ancestral Taíno - from northern Amazonia over the last 2,800 years (Raff, 2022).
Even after Beringia was swallowed up by rising sea-levels, the region remained a hot-spot of human diversity and expansion. There is evidence of geneflow from Modern Paleosiberian groups into North America from 11,500 years ago (Moreno-Mayar, et al. 2018), and vice-versa there was consistent Native American geneflow into northeast Asia over the last 5,000 years which contributed "non-negligible amounts" of ancestry into the ancestors of the Koryak, Chuckhi, and Itelmen peoples (Wang, et al. 2023). The peopling of the North American Arctic proceeded in a step-wise manner: around 5,500 years ago there was movement of "Paleo-Inuit" peoples from Kamchatka that made it as far as Greenland by 4,400 years ago; later on, the people of the Thule culture or "Neo-Inuit" emerged in Alaska between 4,900 and 2,700 years ago, through an admixture event with Modern Paleosiberians. This group began to spread over the Arctic from around the 1200s AD and reached Greenland after a thousand years, in that time sweeping over the genetic signal of the earlier Paleo-Inuit peoples: the living Inuit, Yup'ik, and Unangax̂ (Aleut) peoples are primarily descended from the Neo-Inuit expansion, while the DNA of the Paleo-Inuit survives in admixed form with both Unangax̂ & Na-Dené-speakers in North America and modern Paleosiberians (Raff, 2022).
So far from being an isolated landmass, the Americas remained connected in important ways to the northeast of Eurasia as well as the Pacific islands.
Wrapping-Up
If you made it this far, I offer my sincerest thanks.
As you can probably guess, the story of human migrations did not end in prehistory. It still continued well throughout the Postclassical World and on to the modern age of colonialism and the industrial revolution. It involved the creation of new ethnic groups - Latin Americans being a prime example - while also spreading different populations far and wide over the planet through every means. In the 21st Century, Homo sapiens has continued to be a monotypic, geographically-diverse but near genetically-identical species. Despite all these past popultion expansions stretching back hundreds of thousands of years, the data still stares us in the face: on average, humans are more genetically similar within populations than between populations, with the DNA underpinning supposed "racial characteristics" being miniscule proportionally and non-correlated with each other. Race is not a scientifically accurate way to understand human biological diversity.
I hope these three articles have proviced some insights into how human diversity is understood today, and changes the way you think about "biological race". Humans have a rich and varied past of continuity, population expansions, and admixture that is better understood on its own terms, rather than that be pigeon-holed into a few discrete racial roups. Doing so brings the science of biological anthropology in line with how biologists study the rest of life on Earth, and that benefits everyone.
Book References
Peter Bellwood. The Five Million Year Odyssey (Princeton University Press, 2022)
Jennifer Raff. Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas (Twelve, Grand Central Publishing, 2022)
David Reich. Who We Are and How We Got Here (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Paper & Article Citations
Farhang Aghakhanian, et al. 2022. Sequence analyses of Malaysian Indigenous communities reveal historical admixture between Hoabinhian hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers (Scientific Reports)
Morten E. Allentoft, et al. 2024. Population genomics of post-glacial western Eurasia (Nature)
Jose A. Urban Aragon, et al. 2025. Population histories of the Indigenous Adivasi and Sinhalese from Sri Lanka using whole genomes (Current Biology)
Elena Arciero, et al. 2025. Whole-genome sequences provide insights into the formation and adaptation of human populations in the Himalayas (Current Biology)
Christina M. Balentine, et al. 2022. Evaluating population histories in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, Chile, using ancient mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA (American Journal of Biological Anthropology)
Adrian Viliami Bell, 2023. Selection and adaptation in human migration (Evolutionary Anthropology)
Inga Bergmann, et al. 2022. The relevance of late MSA mandibles on the emergence of modern morphology in Northern Africa (Nature Scientific Reports)
Anders Bergström, et al. 2021. Origins of modern human ancestry (Nature)
Selina Carlhoff, et al. 2021. Genome of a middle Holocene hunter-gatherer from Wallacea (Nature)
Christine Chataigner, 2024. The South Caucasus from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Neolithic: Intersection of the genetic and archaeological data (Quaternary Science Reviews)
Niall P. Cooke, et al. 2021. Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations (Science Advances)
Trevor Cousins, et al. 2025. A structured coalescent model reveals deep ancestral structure shared by all modern humans (Nature Genetics)
Andre Luiz Campelo Dos Santos, et al. 2022. Genomic evidence for ancient human migration routes along South America's Atlantic coast (Proc Biol Sci)
Shaohua Fan, et al. 2023. Whole-genome sequencing reveals a complex African population demographic history and signatures of local adaptation (CellPress)
Xiaobo Feng, et al. 2025. The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans (Science)
Tiago Ferraz, et al. 2023. Genomic history of coastal societies from eastern South America (Nature Ecology and Evolution)
Dorothy First Rider, et al. 2024. Genomic analyses correspond with deep persistence of peoples of Blackfoot Confederacy from glacial times (ScienceAdvances)
André Flores-Bello, et al. 2021. Genetic origins, singularity, and heterogeneity of Basques (Cell Press)
Cesar A Fortes-Lima, et al. 2023. The genetic legacy of the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples in Africa (Nature Portfolio)
Haechan Gill, et al. 2024. Reconstructing the Genetic Relationship between Ancient and Present-Day Siberian Populations (Genome Biology and Evolution)
Mateja Hajdinjak, et al. 2021. Initial Upper Palaeolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry (Nature Portfolio)
Leonardo N. M. Iasi, et al. 2024. Neanderthal ancestry through time: Insights from genomes of ancient and present-day humans (Science)
Alexander G. Ioannidis, et al. 2021. Paths and timings of the peopling of Polynesia inferred from genomic networks (Nature)
Alexander G. Ioannidis, et al. 2020. Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement (Nature)
Douglas J. Kennett, et al. 2022. South-to-north migration preceded the advent of intensive farming in the Maya region (Nature Communications)
Pradiptajati Kusuma, et al. 2023. Deep ancestry of Bornean hunter-gatherers supports long-term local ancestry dynamics (Cell Rep)
Maximilian Larena, et al. 2021. Multiple migrations to the Philippines during the last 50,000 years (PNAS)
Iosif Lazaridis, et al. 2022. The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe (Science)
Mark Lipson, et al. 2020. Ancient West African foragers in the context of African population history (Nature)
Mark Lipson, et al. 2014. Reconstructing Austronesian population history in Island Southeast Asia (Nature Communications)
Yichen Liu, et al. 2021. Insights into human history from the first decade of ancient human genomics (Science)
M. Gallego Llorente, et al. 2015. Ancient Ethiopian genome reveals extensive Eurasian admixture in Eastern Africa (Science)
Marieke van de Loosdrecht, et al. 2018. Pleistocene North African genomes link Near Eastern and sub-Saharan African human populations (Science)
Minmin Ma, et al. 2024. Forager-farmer transition at the crossroads of East and Southeast Asia 4900 years ago (Science Bulletin)
Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, et al. 2016. A genomic history of Aboriginal Australia (Nature)
Xiaowei Mao, et al. 2021. The deep population history of northern East Asia from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene (CellPress)
Mayukh Mondal, et al. 2025. Resolving out of Africa event for Papua New Guinean population using neural network (Nature Communications)
J. Víctor Moreno-Mayar, et al. 2018. Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans (Nature)
Aurélien Mounier & Marta Mirazón Lahr, 2019. Deciphering African late middle Pleistocene hominin diversity and the origin of our species (Nature Communications)
Vagheesh M. Narasimhan, et al. 2019. The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia (Science)
Linda Ongaro & Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, 2024. A history of multiple Denisovan introgression events in modern humans (Nature Genetics)
Cosimo Posth, et al. 2023. Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers (Nature)
Cosimo Posth, et al. 2018. Reconstructing the Deep Population History of Central and South America (CellPress)
Irina Pugach, et al. 2020. Ancient DNA from Guam and the peopling of the Pacific (PNAS)
Aaron P. Ragsdale, et al. 2023. A weakly structured stem for human origins in Africa (Nature)
Carolin Röding, et al. 2022. Mugharet el'Aliya: Affinities of an enigmatic north African Aterian maxillary fragment (American Journal of Biological Anthropology)
Lucy Salazar, et al. 2023. Insights into the genetic histories and lifeways of Machu Picchu’s occupants (Science Advances)
Jose M. Serradell, et al. 2024. Modelling the demographic history of human North African genomes points to a recent soft split divergence between populations (Genome Biology)
Javier G. Serrano, et al. 2023. The genomic history of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands (Nature Communications)
Vasant Shinde, et al. 2019. An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers (CellPress)
Martin Sikora, et al. 2019. The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene (Nature)
Arev P. Sümer, et al. 2024. Earliest modern human genomes constrain timing of Neanderthal admixture (Nature)
Na Sun, et al. 2023. The genetic structure and admixture of Manchus and Koreans in northeast China (Annals of Human Biology)
Debashree Tagore, et al. 2021. Insights into the demographic history of Asia from common ancestry and admixture in the genomic landscape of present-day Austroasiatic speakers (BMC Biol)
Ray Tobler, et al. 2023. The role of genetic selection and climatic factors in the dispersal of anatomically modern humans out of Africa (PNAS)
Ray Tobler, et al. 2017. Aboriginal mitogenomes reveal 50,000 years of regionalism in Australia (Nature)
Alexandros Tsoupas, et al. 2025. Local increases in admixture with hunter-gatherers followed the initial expansion of Neolithic farmers across continental Europe (ScienceAdvances)
Leonardo Vallini, et al. 2024. The Persian plateau served as hub for Homo sapiens after the main out of Africa dispersal (Nature Communications)
Leonardo Vallini, et al. 2022. Genetics and Material Culture Support Repeated Expansions into Paleolithic Eurasia from a Population Hub Out of Africa (Genome Biol Evol)
Viridiana Villa-Islas, et al. 2023. Demographic history and genetic structure in pre-Hispanic Central Mexico (Science)
Ke Wang, et al. 2023. Middle Holocene Siberian genomes reveal highly connected gene pools throughout North Asia (Current Biology)
Eske Willerslev & David J. Meltzer, 2021. Peopling of the Americas as inferred from ancient genomics (Nature)
Jianxue Xiong, et al. 2025. The genomic history of East Asian Middle Neolithic millet- and rice-agricultural populations (Cell Genomics)
Melinda A. Yang, 2022. A genetic history of migration, diversification, and admixture in Asia (Human Population Genetics and Genomics)
Melinda A. Yang, et al. 2020. Ancient DNA indicates human population shifts and admixture in northern and southern China (Science)
Tian Chen Zeng, et al. 2025. Ancient DNA reveals the prehistory of the Uralic and Yeniseian peoples (Nature)
Fan Zhang, et al. 2021. The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies (Nature)
Mian Zhao, et al. 2009. Mitochondrial genome evidence reveals successful Late Paleolithic settlement on the Tibetan Plateau (PNAS)
Visualization of different conceptual models of race (from here)
In the previous post, I outlined the history of racial anthropology and explained what current research as to say about the diversity of humans. In brief, Homo sapiens is a monotypic species with great regional variation, but this variation cannot be quantified into discrete races and can only be understood clinally. There have not been very great geographical or biological barriers between populations and demes to have given rise to different subspecies. Genetically, humans were remarkably similar to each other, more similar than the members of other large mammalian groups are to each other. When quantified, the concept of biological race falls flat.
Still, that regional variation is important and cannot be ignored. What about the great range of skin colors, hair types, skull morphologies, and other features of our bodies? How can we explain all this, if we're so similar?
The following is a rundown of various physical and genetic traits that have been used over the centuries in attempts to classify races, and were viewed by some as essential markers of race. There has been a large body of modern research on these characteristics, as you will see below:
Skin Color
Map of Indigenous skin colors in relation to latitude, based on the work of anthropologist Renato Biasutti (Samuel, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Perhaps the most visible marker of race, skin pigmentation has been so important in delineating human groups that even today we speak of "white people" and "Black people" as if these are discrete categories with biological meaning behind them.
In the early days of modern research, anthropologists noticed a correlation between latitude & climate and the maps of Indigenous skin colors around the world. It was argued that skin color was an adaptive feature in response to ultraviolet radiation and how it affects vitamin D synthesis, the breakdown of folates, and other aspects of healthy functioning (Jablonski & Chaplin, 2000). African populations vary in dark skin-pigmentation and, so the hypothesis went, as one subset expanded into Eurasia from roughly ~80 thousand years ago they encountered new latitudes and environmental conditions unfamiliar to their continent of origin at the time. Dark skin protects from intense UV radiation but by doing so it prohibits essential production of vitamin D that is needed - for example - for aid in pregnancy and milk production. In regions where there is little UV radiation, then, humans evolved lighter skin pigmentation to allow for vital vitamin functions. As well, over time, females of all populations developed slightly lighter skin from males, ensuring more healthy pregnancies.
Seems simple enough, but further research has called into question some things in this model. For example, among African groups alone, skin pigmentation is highly diverse, and all the genes associated with lighter colors in, say, Europe and East Asia, not only originated in Africa but predate Homo sapiens by several hundred thousand years (Crawford, et al. 2017; Feng, et al. 2021). As well, for groups living in Australia or the Indian Subcontinent, they directly inherited their dark skin from Africa too and these variants also originated before our species evolved. Thus, the genomes of the small groups who left Africa ~80 KYA contained all the alleles for such vastly different skin colors within them, but those for lighter skins may not even have necessarily been selected for in response to new conditions. In a review by Andrea Hanel and Carsten Carlberg, ancient DNA recovered from the remains of Paleolithic and Neolithic (the old & new stone ages, respectively) Europeans shows that, up until the last 5,000 years or so, they were still primarily dark-skinned to some degree. How could this be if dark skin would inhibit certain health functions in the bitter-cold, low-UV landscapes of Ice Age Europe? It seems that there were adaptations to other proteins that managed to allowed humans to gain the vitamin D and folate-breakdowns necessary for life even if their skin couldn't do the job (Hanel & Carlberg, 2020).
It seems, then, that skin color is a very fluid and ever-shifting condition for our species. Ancestrally, the genus Homo varied in pigmentation as our bodies shifted from fur to thinner (but no less dense) hair on our practically naked bodies. There were many different alleles for both darker or lighter skin that fluctuated over tens of thousands of years. In fact, the lighter skin of modern Europeans and East Asians seem to have been remarkably recent developments; for Europeans within the last 5,000 years, for East Asians within the last 7,500 years (Zhang, et al. 2022). Paleoart depictions of Ice Age peoples in both these regions should, therefore, probably be more dark-skinned than is usually imagined.
On a related note, I found this article very enlightening in regards to the myth of "skin thickness" between "races".
Hair Color & Texture
Map of Indigenous hair colors (translated from ecologix, CC BY-SA 4.0)
So skin color seems to be related to natural selection. Research by Nina Jablonski and George Chaplin seem to indicate that hair color diversity has more to do with genetic drift than natural selection. This is a far more random process in which the genes in founding populations, which have split off from larger and more genetically-diverse groups, take root and spread widely among their descendants.
A look at the distribution of hair colors above is a case in point: ancestrally Homo sapiens appears to have had jet-black hair and this is our default condition, but over time as certain groups with hair-color mutations arose in parts of the world, those traits became more fixed (Jablonski & Chaplin, 2017). The more isolated some groups were, the more likely such highly-derived hair colors would remain, hence the red hair in certain Northern European peoples or the blond hair in Solomon Islanders, which are regulated by specific alleles. In fact, hair color can near accurately be predicted from genetic material because of how few genes regulate it (Branicki, et al. 2022). It should be noted, as well, that hair color as a trait can change within a person's lifetime (Kumar, et al. 2018).
Hair texture and fiber shape is highly reflective of historic human movements, with research on the morphology of hair in different human sample groups shows a greater diversity within African populations than elsewhere in the world (Franbourg, et al. 2003; Lasisi, et al. 2016). This is an area of active research in desparate need of better research tools (Lasisi, et al. 2021), but we have learned that hair texture does appear to be influenced by natural selection. The tight curly hair typical of many African populations statistically played the best role in reducing heat gain and water loss from intense solar radiation and may have been the ancestral condition for our species (Lasisi, et al. 2023).
Eye Color
Prehistoric spread of skin, hair, & eye colors in Western Eurasia, from Hanel & Carlberg, 2020
Both hair and eye color do not appear to correlate with geographic distribution nor levels of UV radiation, and seem to be better explained as products of genetic drift than strong natural selection (Jablonski & Chaplin, 2017). Dark brown eyes seem to have been the standard for the earliest members of our species, and as populations moved around the world, a select few mutations created the great host of different eye colors we see today (Hanel & Carlberg, 2020). In the earliest European groups, for example, a gene called OCA2 which codes for iris de-pigmentation is responsible for the blue-eyed condition, which, in turn, was shuffled as other groups entered Europe in successive years; the first agriculturalists to enter Europe from Southwest Asia, as one instance, introduced genes for brown eyes (Fu, et al. 2016).
Skull Shape
Principle Component Analysis (PCA) of a global sample size of human skulls, plotted by degrees of physical similarity (from Matsumura, et al. 2022)
The history of biological anthropology is full of research based on craniometry, or the study of skull morphology. Texts abound with descriptions and classifications of "dolichocephalic" and "brachycephalic" peoples and these were features used to define human races. At first glance it seems obvious that the shape of the skull would be key to "figuring out a person's race" but recent studies incorporated genetics and the fossil record have demonstrated that skull shape is only part of the story.
For starters, all living human skulls share more similarities with each other than they do to other extinct human species like Neanderthals, and as well, all living and fossil Homo sapiens skulls are more closely allied physically than they are to other humans (Relenthford, 2024). Previous attempts to find a million-year-old deep-ancestry for modern races within different fossils of Homo erectus have not stood the test of time, as the genetic signature of all living humans shows a significantly more recent ancestry than this.
Secondly, the genetics factors behind skull shape have been found to be highly complex. A recent 2023 paper found that the physiology of the cranial vault (the upper part of the skull which supports the brain) was supported by 30 different areas of the genome, and related primarily to health and development (Goovaerts, et al. 2023). Taken in full, the human cranium is underpinned by a significant amount of genetic variation that seems to be constrained in its ability to undergo evolutionary change by its connection to other genes which affect development (Martínez-Abadías, et al. 2009). That said, certain areas of the skull show more of a tendency to change and be inherited than others, like the nasal and orbital cavities and the cheek bones, and these seem to be related to environmental factors; for example, there is a marked level of evolutionary convergence in the skulls of peoples living in the freezing-cold north of Europe, North America, and Northeast Asia (Hubbe, et al. 2009). Likewise, nasal projection in certain human populations seems to be related to dry and humid conditions (Carey & Steegmann, 1981). Interestingly, the rise of agriculture in several parts of the world does not seem to have had as much of an affect on skull shape: when the skulls of foragers and farmers were compared in one study, the differences between them were significantly small and this may reflect the long pre-agricultural history of cooking, grinding, and pounding food that hunter-gatherers had first perfected over tens of thousands of years (Katz, et al. 2017).
Much like hair texture, skull shape shows a greater morphological variation within Africa, which decreases statistically the further away from the continent you go. This is to be expected, considering the recent ~80 KYA population expansion from Africa which involved successively less-genetically diverse groups the further away they migrated (Matsumura, et al. 2022; Cramon-Taubadel, 2014). Even so, as the PCA analysis above demonstrates, there is still a significant overlap in skull shape between different global populations.
Taken together, global research indicates that the total variation in skull morphology was dictated by neutral evolution (which confers no effects on reproductive fitness) while certain aspects of the skull like the nose and cheeks are affected by evolutionary adaptation to climate, and that this variation is easily inherited through genetic drift.
As a relevant aside, a 2002 study found an opposite correlation of genetic variation between craniometrics and skin color: "roughly 13% of the total diversity is among regions, 6% among local populations within regions, and 81% within local populations" for skull shape, "88% of total variation among regions, 3% among local populations within regions, and 9% within local populations" regarding skin color (Relenthford, 2002).
Dentition
Shovel vs non-shovel shaped incisors (edited from dozentist, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The human jaw does not appear to be affected by neutral evolution but instead is directly correlated to diet and the physical pressures of chewing (Harvati, et al. 2024). This is in direct contrast with the cranium, which as aforementioned showed little distinctions between foragers and farmers. Sexual dimorphism also plays a role in the shape of the mandible, once again demonstrating a human characteristic affected by multiple factors.
As far as teeth are concerned, they do appear to evolve neutrally and therefore can be linked to genetic mutations and specific population movements (Rathmaan, et al. 2023). This has led to some fascinating research regarding the historical clues left in human dentition in certain parts of the world, much of it through the work of biological anthropologists Richard Scott and Christy Turner.
Some populations in East Asia show a condition called sinodonty, where the back of their incisor teeth are shaped like shovels (see above). This trait has been traced back both genetically and in the archaeological record about 35 thousand years ago, and it appears to have been inherited by the ancestors of Amerindian peoples in a derived "hyper-sinodont" form. Other groups in Eastern Eurasia show sundadonty, which lacks shoveling, especially among Southeast Asians, Polynesians, and the historic Jōmon of Japan (Aboriginal Australians and the people of New Guinea show neither condition). These distinctions in dentition clearly are reflective of successive population movements in prehistory that can be detected in human remains:
"As with virtually all human biological variation, however, dental traits do not show presence/absence patterns that enable clear differentiation between biogeographic groups. Rather, we see varying degrees of affinity that support the inference that human biological variation exhibits a gradual change in trait frequencies across populations" (Scott, et al. 2023).
Blood Type
Splits and changes of red blood cell alleles over time between different human species (from Mazières, et al. 2025)
Red blood cell types have also historically been used in studies on race in the pre-genomic age. Recent research has focused more on DNA sequencing and full-scale genome sequencing, but in recent years interest as re-emerged on blood types.
The distribution of the A, B, and O blood types is best explained primarily through genetic drift and positive evolutionary selection (unlike neutral, positive selection confers beneficial reproductive success). Thus, when blood types are mapped onto the continents, there are very few exclusive correlations with human populations.
A recent 2025 study found evidence that the change in blood groups can be traced almost neatly to the recent Eurasian expansion of ~80 thousand years ago (Mazières, et al. 2025). Both Indigenous Africans and our nearest fossil relatives the Neanderthals and Denisovans share the same blood groups, pointing to an inherited trait from our common ancestor well beyond 400,000 years ago. As a few small groups emerged from Africa 80 KYA and experienced a rapid change in blood types in the millennia following this movement.
Genetic Traits Related to Diet & Health
Some traits discovered through genetic sequencing have been argued to be specific "racial markers" for certain groups. Given, at this point, we're trying to understand human diversity through the lense of a modern evolutionary understanding, it's better to look at these traits and markers as evidence of past adaptations and movements rather than as a "checklist" of traits for any one race.
Take, for example, variant 370A of the gene EDAR. This encodes for a protein responsible for the development of skin, hair, teeth, and sweat glands in the embryo. Around 35 thousand years ago, evidence of this variant change emerged in Eastern Eurasia and spread across the region by 19 thousand years ago, where it was subsequently picked up by both the ancestors of Native Americans and the early Polynesian wayfinders. In the descendants of all these groups, EDAR 370 A is associated with thick hair, an increase in the density of sweat glands, and sinodonty (Kamberov, et al. 2013; Mao, et al. 2021; Zhang, et al. 2022). Why did this trait emerge and spread so quickly during this time. Research is ongoing but it is notable that during the Last Ice Age East Eurasia experienced a significantly humid phase, so having thicker hair and a greater ability to sweat would have been beneficial for hunter-gatherers living in such a dry region.
Other traits are related to agricultural developments within the last 12 thousand years or so. For example, an allele variant of the gene ADH1B has been found to have emerged within East Asian groups that domesticated rice, which was often fermented into alcoholic beverages: though this process conferred nutritional benefits at the time, in recent centuries it has also been correlated with increased negative affects of alcohol consumption (Peng, et al. 2010). Lactase persistence - or the ability to drink milk into adulthood - has been shown to correlate with a deep history of cattle domestication and reliance on milk products. Contrary to the "whimsy" of certain white-supremacist groups, while lactase persistence is highly prevalant in European populations, it is also found widely in African and southern Eurasian groups (Itan, et al. 2010). Drinking milk as an adult doesn't make you "racially superior".
Another common misconception is that the "sickle-cells are a Black trait". In brief, sickle-cells are caused by a mutation that changes the shape of red blood cells from circles to crescent "sickle" shapes. This change goes some way towards the prevention of malaria as the Plasmodium parasite which causes it cannot survive for long in a sickle-celled blood stream. That said, in the modern age of increased lifespans, having sickle-cells for many years can lead to anemias and other diseases that destroy the body's ability to function. Recent genomic research has shown a single origin of the sickle-cell mutation as far back as 7,300 years ago to the Holocene Wet Phase, a period of humid, wetland conditions across the Sahara, Middle East, Southern Asia, and the Mediterranean (Shriner & Rotimi, 2018). This mutation subsequently spread across Africa and into Eurasia. So although it is true that people of African and African American descent show a high likelihood of having the sickle-cell mutation, specific cases of it merely correlate with areas that currently or historically harbor malaria parasites. South Asians, Greeks, Turks, Arabs, and other descendant populations can have the mutation too.
What about Intelligence?
I suppose a brief word must be said about IQ and intelligence.
A popular hot-button topic among academics and cranks alike is the question of whether human races differ cognitively. Much ink has been spilled on this topic - personally, I found Angela Saini's 2019 book Superior to handle the subject most completely & honestly - and there are obvious political stakes depending on who you ask.
Attempts have been made by some researchers to find specific genetic markers of intelligence, but have always come to dead-ends. Geneticist Bruce Lahn comes to mind: his work arguing that gene variants for brain size recently evolved in some human groups verses others have since failed to be replicated and debunked (Mekel-Bobrov, et al. 2007; Timpson, et al. 2007). Curiously, such individuals conducting such research always seem to have ulterior motivations.
Then there is the matter of IQ or intelligence quotients, which provide a score of cognitive intelligence based on specific tests. Previous IQ studies have been used to "prove" that certain human groups are smarter than others, but upon close examination what such IQ tests show says more about socio-political status and environmental health and stability than anything about "biological race". Poor and disenfranchised groups are often struggling with basic survival and nutrition, which affects brain health and development and thus shaped the IQ scores they may recieve. As well, IQ tests may say something about the ability of an individual to perform mathematical, scientific, or academic problems well, but will say nothing about a person's ability to perform socio-cultural or artistic functions: different "intelligences" are needed for each of these. In total, IQ gives only part of the status of an individual and betrays an ability to celebrate what makes each person whole and unique.
In any case, as the quote below from Hampshire, et al. 2012 beautifully spells out, a multitude of factors go into human intelligence, on genetic, environmental, nutritional, and social fronts. There is nothing specific in the brain in regards to intelligence that can be accurately measured and thus traced genetically through some human descent groups verses others.
In Summary
If this brief and in-exhaustive look at the modern science of human physical and genetic variation is a bit confusing, admittedly that is the point. In evolutionary biology - especially cladistics - we are so used to thinking of the acquisition of defining evolutionary traits as very straight forward. Tigers and house cats have retractable claws, but bears don't; tigers, house cats, and bears have shearing carnassial teeth, but horses don't; tigers, house cats, bears, and horses have a complex placenta, but wombats don't; and so on.
When studying human variation in the present and over time, we simply cannot look at traits in the same way. Physical traits that appear to be concrete like skin color, hair texture, and skull shape, are influenced by so many, often non-correlating factors, and our flexibility in adapting to new environments and interbreeding with each other means that such traits will never stay distinct within populations and demes for long.
Instead of thinking about human variation in terms of racial groups, which creates misleading simplistic binary models, it is better and more scientifically accurate to consider the totality of the data and understand human variation as the complex historic process is truly was.
And in the last part of this series, I hope to do just that and trace the origin and spread of Homo sapiens to where it stands today, showing a far more accurate way to understand human diversity.
Book References
Gavin Evans. Skin Deep: Dispelling the Science of Race (Oneworld Books, 2019)
Angela Saini. Superior: the Return of Race Science (Beacon Press, 2019)
G. Richard Scott & Christy G. Turner. The Anthropology of Modern Human Teeth (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Paper & Article Citations
Wojciech Branicki, et al. 2011. Model-based prediction of human hair color using DNA variants (Human Genetics)
J W. Carey & A T. Steegmann Jr, 1981. Human nasal protrusion, latitude, and climate (American Journal of Physical Anthropology)
Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel, 2014. Evolutionary insights into global patterns of human cranial diversity: population history, climatic and dietary effects (Journal of Anthropological Sciences)
Nicholas G. Crawford, et al. 2017. Loci associated with skin pigmentation identified in African populations (Science)
Yuanqing Feng, et al. 2021. Evolutionary genetics of skin pigmentation in African populations (Human Molecular Genetics)
A. Franbourg, et al. 2003. Current Research on Ethnic Hair (J Am Acad Dermatol)
Qiaomei Fu, et al. 2016. The genetic history of Ice Age Europe (Nature)
Seppe Goovaerts, et al. 2023. Joint multi-ancestry and admixed GWAS reveals the complex genetics behind human cranial vault shape (Nature Communications)
Andrea Hanel & Carsten Carlberg, 2020. Skin colour and vitamin D: An update (Experimental Dermatology)
Katerina Harvati, et al. 2024. Comparative 3D Shape Analysis of the Iwo Eleru Mandible, Nigeria (PaleoAnthropology)
Mark Hubbe, et al. 2009. Climate Signatures in the Morphological Differentiation of Worldwide Modern Human Populations (The Anatomical Record)
Yuval Itan, et al. 2010. A worldwide correlation of lactase persistence phenotype and genotypes (BMC Evolutionary Biology)
Nina Jablonski & George Chaplin, 2017. The colours of humanity: the evolution of pigmentation in the human lineage (Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci)
Nina Jablonski & George Chaplin, 2000. The evolution of human skin coloration (Journal of Human Evolution)
Yana G. Kamberov, et al. 2013. Modeling Recent Human Evolution in Mice by Expression of a Selected EDAR Variant (Cell)
David C. Katz, et al. 2017. Changes in human skull morphology across the agricultural transition are consistent with softer diets in preindustrial farming groups (PNAS)
Anagha Bangalore Kumar, et al. 2018. Premature Graying of Hair: Review with Updates (International Journal of Trichology)
Tina Lasisi, et al. 2023. Human scalp hair as a thermoregulatory adaptation (PNAS)
Tina Lasisi, et al. 2021. High-throughput phenotyping methods for quantifying hair fiber morphology (Nature Scientific Reports)
Tina Lasisi, et al. 2016. Quantifying variation in human scalp hair fiber shape and pigmentation (American Journal of Biological Anthropology)
Xiaowei Mao, et al. 2021. The deep population history of northern East Asia from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene (Cell)
Neus Martínez-Abadías, et al. 2009. Heritability of human cranial dimensions: comparing the evolvability of different cranial regions (Journal of Anatomy)
Hirofumi Matsumura, et al. 2022. Global patterns of the cranial form of modern human populations described by analysis of a 3D surface homologous model (Nature Scientific Reports)
Stéphane Mazières, et al. 2025. Rapid change in red cell blood group systems after the main Out of Africa of Homo sapiens (Nature Scientific Reports)
N. Mekel-Bobrov, et al. 2007. The ongoing adaptive evolution of ASPM and Microcephalin is not explained by increased intelligence (Human Molecular Genetics)
Luca Pagani, et al. 2016. Genomic analyses inform on migration events during the peopling of Eurasia (Nature)
Yi Peng, et al. 2010. The ADH1B Arg47His polymorphism in East Asian populations and expansion of rice domestication in history (BMC Evolutionary Biology)
Frédéric B. Piel, et al. 2020. Global distribution of the sickle cell gene and geographical confirmation of the malaria hypothesis (Nature Communications)
Hannes Rathmann, et al. 2023. Inferring human neutral genetic variation from craniodental phenotypes (PNAS NEXUS)
John H. Relethford, 2023. Craniometric variation and the ancestry of modern humans (American Journal of Biological Anthropology)
John H. Relethford, 2002. Apportionment of global human genetic diversity based on craniometrics and skin color (American Journal of Physical Anthropology)
Jon Riddell, et al. 2020. Characterisation of a second gain of function EDAR variant, encoding EDAR380R, in East Asia (European Journal of Human Genetics)
Nakisa B. Sadeghi & Adewole S. Adamson, 2023. The Problematic Legacy of Skin-Thickness Measurement in Race-Based Dermatology Research (JAMA Dermatology)
G. Richard Scott, et al. 2023. Peopling of the Americas: A new approach to assessing dental morphological variation in Asian and Native American populations (American Journal of Biological Anthropology)
G. Richard Scott, et al. 2016. Sinodonty, Sundadonty, and the Beringian Standstill model: Issues of timing and migrations into the New World (Quaternary International)
Daniel Shriner & Charles N. Rotimi, 2018. Whole-Genome-Sequence-Based Haplotypes Reveal Single Origin of the Sickle Allele during the Holocene Wet Phase (The American Journal of Human Genetics)
Pontus Skoglund & Iain Mathieson, 2018. Ancient Genomics of Modern Humans: The First Decade (Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics)
Nicholas Timpson, et al. 2007. Comment on Papers by Evans et al. and Mekel-Bobrov et al. on Evidence for Positive Selection of MCPH1 and ASPM (Science)
Xiaoming Zhang, et al. 2022. A Late Pleistocene human genome from Southwest China (Current Biology)
A small sample of our species (Eric Haynes, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
The following is adapted from the extensive notes for what would have been Episode 4 of my Through Time and Clades lecture series "Humanity, a Prologue - Season 2". I still find the material I intended to cover very important and felt it would make for a good series of blog posts.
This first post will outline a brief history of the study of race and human diversity in anthropology, and then ask whether Homo sapiens can be scientifically classified in such a way. I intend the second post to outline how human diversity is understood today, and the third post will trace the evolution of human diversity through time, primarily through genetics and aDNA.
What is Race?
A race is social classification unit of humans based on physical characteristics that are considered significant as distinguishing traits. Put another way, "race is a worldview and social classification that divides humans into groups based on their appearance and assumed ancestry, and that has been used to establish social hierarchies" (Graves & Goodman, 2022). Therefore, the idea of human races is tied with the history of human social relations, as we shall soon see below.
However, the word race has become confused in the public perception of anthropology. There are assumptions of synonymy between terms like "race", "ancestry", "ethnicity", etc, but it must be stressed that each of these terms have distinct meanings.
For the benefit of readers, let's go over some of these other terms, as they will be used again throughout this series of articles.
Ethnicity - and ethnic groups - are explicitly cultural definitions. Belonging to a specific ethnicity means identifying with a group of people who share specific norms, mores, customs, values, traditions, beliefs, and habits (Kottak, 2008). Ethnic groups can be in essence religiously-based, or linguistically-based, or tied to a specific country or region, and are considered by others and themselves as belonging to the same culture and having the same history. Sometimes, but not exclusively, they can be based on race.
Ancestry is somewhat trickier to define. We think of our ancestors as the people who came before us (and a few folks may even suspect that all of their ancestors belong to a particular race) and it is a fact that the further back you go eventually you will reach the last common ancestral population of our species Homo sapiens. However, the essence of ancestry is complex and multifaceted.
Take, for example, the thought-experiment outlined by Steve Olson in his 2002 book Mapping Human History: think about your biological parents, now think about their parents. That gives you four grandparents. Now think about their parents. And keep going. You are essentially doubling your ancestral pool as you go back down the generations. Mathematically, you will eventually reach a point where the total number of ancestors alive at any given time will far exceed the known global human population (for example: if you take a generation to mean 20 years, then 30 generations ago you should have over a billion ancestors... but estimates of the human population in 1400 don't reach much beyond 375 million people!).
That means, according to statistician Joseph Chang, that when you reach a certain point (by his calculations just 800 years ago) there are two possibilities: any given person alive at the time is either your ancestor and everyone else's ancestor, or they have left no living descendants (Chang, 1999). Subsequent work has elaborated and tweaked this model - the common-ancestral age estimate has been placed somewhere 3,600 years ago - but the core findings hold true: "we see families as discrete units in our lifetimes, which they are. But they're fluid and continuous over longer periods beyond our view, and our family trees sprawl in all directions" (Rutherford, 2017). Given what we know of world history from beyond the modern colonial era, people got around fairly easily and were certainly not overwhelmingly limited by geography.
For the purposes of genetics research, scientists have used the term "ancestry" to mean different things in regards to the sample size or the period of time being studied. For the purposes of these articles, I will be discussing genetic ancestry as referring to the recovered DNA signature in descent groups that are inherited from older related or ancestral populations.
That brings us now to more technical terminology that you might come across in scientific literature. According to Philip W. Hedrick, populations are defined in terms of mating propensity, while demes are a group of interbreeding individuals that exist together in time and space, from whom mates would normally be chosen (Hedrick, 2011). These then are historical terms with no absolute boundaries: much like the rest of life, human populations and demes change over time and acquire new characteristics. This is especially true in the case of admixture or introgression, terms designating when two or more temporal populations intermix genetically, which is all the more clear in our aforementioned discussion of ancestry. As a rule, the larger the sampled population, the more frequent will be the record of admixture.
Thus, we need to be precise when using such terminology. Populations and ethnicities are not races, and race is not the same as ancestry. For a more rigorous explanation of these distinctions, statistical geneticist Sasha Gusev has written on the subject here.
A Brief History of Racial Anthropology
So where did our understanding of race and human diversity come from? People have no doubt recognized differences and similarities amongst each other since the earliest times, but so far as the evidence tells us, ancient peoples put significantly less emphasis on race as a biological concept than modern peoples have done. The Greek philosophers Aristotle & Hippocrates II spoke at length about environmental determinism and believed that climate and latitude could produce "better" or "lesser" peoples (Quinn, 2024). Other Greeks, and later Roman authors (including Christians), would embrace these ideas and use them to justify slave practices and colorism (Kendi, 2016). However, the construction of biological races as immutable categories was not in the minds of the ancients, despite an awareness of human physical variation (Graves & Goodman, 2022). They were more concerned with cultural differences and superiority, and a person - regardless of their country of origin - could assimilate and "make themselves" into, say, a Greek or Roman (Sussman, 2014).
The first inklings of biological-racialism began to show towards the end of the post-classical or medieval world. The horrifying practices of the Spanish Inquisition were at once racist and antisemitic in that they singled-out specific groups (primarily the Jewish people but also Romani & Christianized Muslims) and sought to remove them from society (Sussman, 2014). Far from being simply a religious conflict, the Inquisition specifically classified people based on "impurity of blood" and forbid the assimilation of groups that had been the norm since classical times. This mentality transferred with the Iberian colonists as they reached the Western Hemisphere and encountered Amerindian peoples, as well as during their earlier expeditions along the western African coasts.
It is particularly telling that the origin of racist ideas should have commenced during the trans-Atlantic colonial era. In previous times, explorers in Eurasia and North Africa tended to travel on foot or over caravans. As we will see, human variation is clinal with no prominent breaks in sequence: a person traveling from western Europe to China would meet people who each time would look gradually different but still retain mostly similar features. Now consider a Spanish or British sailor traveling to Central America or southern Africa: their frame of reference would now be disparate and opposite ends of a spectrum, the differences in physical features on people being necessarily enhanced by having missed the clinal variation between them (Graves & Goodman, 2022).
In any case, such differences made racist thoughts, laws, and practices all the more easier to justify, and it wasn't long until cultural and physical descriptions merged into racist categories: one of the first was the French scholar François Bernier in 1684 whose "new division of the earth" recognized 4-5 races of people and argued that white Europeans were the original blueprint of humanity. Carl Linnaeus - the founder of our modern biological classification - elaborated this scheme with his own 5-race system in 1758. He agreed with the elevation of Europeans and specifically defined the races in terms of both physical traits and cultural norms which to him were treated objectively but are so very clearly prejudiced and ignorant upon basic reading (Kendi, 2016). Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a contemporary of Linnaeus, devised a rival 5-race system in 1795 and was the first to coin the term "Caucasian" to refer to Europeans and related peoples in southern Asia. At the same time, the bodies of disenfranchised and Indigenous peoples were being studied and dissected to support these schemes. This practice was carried on well into the 1800s. The American doctor Samuel George Morton had amassed an enormous collection of human skulls for the purposes of measurement and comparison, beginning in 1839. He concluded that the skulls of Caucasians had the highest cranial capacity and thus were the most intelligent of humans. It is interesting to consider that, while paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould had reviewed and criticized Morton's work in 1981 to much surprising controversy, in Morton's own time a German scholar Friedrich Tiedemann performed much the same experiment and could not replicate the results, subsequently seeking to challenge Morton's findings in the name of antiracism (Kendi, 2016).
From the earliest colonial times to the peak of pre-Darwinian evolutionary thought, there was an on-going discourse among Europeans about whether the human races descended from different ancestors (the polygenesis model) or whether all humans descend from one ancestor (the monogenesis model). Such arguments played key roles in the justification of slavery and other racist practices among the European nations at home and abroad. After Charles Darwin outlined natural selection in print in 1859, he eventually penned his research on human origins in another book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex by 1871. Darwin's analysis was at once enlightened and prejudiced: he agreed with the monogenesis model and pointed out problems in racial classification from earlier authors, but he argued that the races were ancient, suspected that they came about due to sexual selection, and that each had differing levels of cognition. He agreed with his contemporaries that European peoples were the most civilized and lightly implied that the subjugation and genocide of "primitive" "savages" was an outcome of natural selection (DeSilva et al. 2021). From almost immediately this moment on, the study of human races gained an evolutionary veneer, and many scholars who misunderstood the principles of natural selection used its language to justify human hierarchies.
In one direction, this developed into a persistent and sinister ideology. In 1855, French royalist diplomat Arthur de Gobineau published An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races in which he argued over four volumes that the physical and mental characters of different human races had remained consistent from the beginning and would remain so into the future. Among the Caucasians, Gobineau highlighted the "Aryans" (a term for the proto-Indo-European-speaking groups which lived across Central Asia) were the most advanced and responsible for everything good and civilized in the world (Kendi, 2016). Several authors took Gobineau's work and expanded upon it, including economist William Z. Ripley, whose 1899 book The Races of Europe was treated as an authoritative work in racial anthropological circles (Sussman, 2014). In the end, a direct line of descent can be traced from Gobineau & his peers to the foundations of both the American eugenics movement and the ideology of Nazism.
Long before the early 1900s, when modern anthropology came of age, there had always been antiracist critiques of the mainstream academics and scholars who purported their ideas about race. From John Woolman to Frederick Douglass, it would be unfair to say that the study of human diversity was always upheld by bigots. It would also be unfair to downplay the role of racism and its prevalence in all forms across the history of anthropology.
The work of Franz Boas and his students did much to shape the course of the field. As members of the American School of Cultural Anthropology, they approached the study of humanity from a holistic and non-essentialist approach, rejecting ideas of evolutionary hierarchy and white supremacy (Erickson & Murphy, 2008). Though not always free from cultural biases, Boas himself studied American immigrants of many backgrounds and found that some traits (like skull shape) said more about health and environment than "racial purity". Critically, in a 1894 paper , Boas said the following: "Historical events appear to have been much more potent in leading races to civilization than faculty, and it follows that achievements of races do not warrant us to assume that one race is more highly gifted than the other" (Sussman, 2014). Further work by Robert Lowie, Alfred Kroeber, & Margaret Mead did much to dismantle the scientific paradigm that a person's race determined their culture or psychology.
There were still attempts to classify human races, however, with the most notable and widely-cited attempt by Carleton S. Coon in his 1962 The Origins of Races. This work adapted an earlier scientific racial nomenclature for much of the later 20th Century, describing "Caucasoids" & "Mongoloids", for example. Such terms, frustratingly, remain in use in some circles to this day. Coon utilized older arguments from early paleoanthropology to argue that human races developed from deep in the past, from various populations of Homo erectus rather than from a single Homo sapiens ancestor. In many ways, Coon was challenging a growing consensus among younger anthropologists that "biological race" as a concept should be abandoned in regards to humans. One of Boas' students, Ashley Montagu, had written extensively on human evolution from the view of the growing modern synthesis since the 1940s, and he played a key role in outlining the UNESCO statements on race in the 1960s (Sussman, 2014). And the work of Sherwood Washburn - notably a 1951 paper - pushed for a complete overhaul of physical anthropology and a rejection of the idea of racial classification.
By the end of the 20th Century, racial anthropology had undergone a significant metamorphosis. The increasing study of human cultural and physical diversity, the advent of genetic studies, and the processing power of computer modeling had through the world's largest wrench into the study of "race". There was also a greater awareness of the societal damage done by racial anthropology and the need to seriously study the phenomena earlier scholars under modern scientific advances: "conformity to political correctness was not the cause of these changes; rather awareness of the uses of race in colonialism, slavery, segregation, and in the holocaust stimulated re-examination of the race concept using the new genetic data that was accumulated throughout the 20th century" (Leiberman, et al. 2003).
Today, many researchers have brought to light a proper understanding of human diversity in a modern evolutionary context. And their tools and data sets are even greater than at the turn of the century: we can now peer into the human genome and sequence DNA and proteins that are thousands to millions of years old. Much of this new and current research will be explored in these articles.
How Are Subspecies Recognized?
So why are humans so diverse? We're mammals right? And we recognize that many mammalian species can be divided into subspecies, so why not us? And if we can be, wouldn't these subspecies be considered races?
If the question of "what is a species" is controversial in biology and paleontology, then the question of "what is a subspecies" is probably more-so. Since the early days of Linnaean taxonomy, naturalists have flooded the literature with trinomial names, often using little justification beyond differences in, say, fur color or relative size. In 1942, biologist Ernst Mayr defined a subspecies (which he synonymized with "geographic race") as "a geographically localized subdivision of the species, which differs genetically and taxonomically from other subdivisions of the species". Other later authors have provided mathematical rules based on genetics; for example, Susan Haig & colleagues wrote that "the only quantitative subspecies definition we found was the 75% rule that states a subspecies is valid if 75% or more of a population is separable from all (or >99% of ) members of the overlapping population" (Haig, et al. 2006).
In their 2019 book concerning wolf conservation, Joseph Travis and colleagues provide more multifaceted criteria. They argued for combining a wealth of 1) morphological and fossil evidence, 2) genetic evidence, and 3) ecological and behavioral evidence to support a proper and valid taxonomic division of a subspecies, with "the general view being that subspecies are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding populations that are phylogenetically distinguishable from, but reproductively compatible with, other such groups" (Travis, et al. 2019).
One could argue that all this talk of subspecies is moot. Stephen Jay Gould argued in his essay "Why We Should Not Name Human Races - a Biological View" that the use of subspecies as a classifier inhibits and oversimplifies our understanding of regional evolution. Using case studies from island land snails and house sparrows, he decried "shall our approach to such variation be that of a cataloger? Shall we artificially partition such a dynamic and continuous pattern into distinct units with formal names? Would it not be better to map this variability objectively without imposing upon it the subjective criteria for formal subdivision that any taxonomist must use in naming subspecies?" (Gould, 1977).
Regardless, there is at least a set of guidelines that can be followed to determine whether humans can be classified as subspecies. Such processes have already been used to mold a proper understanding of living mammalian diversity, and this research is perpetually changing. For example, it was once proposed that tigers (Panthera tigris) constituted about nine subspecies, but arguments have been made to condense this number to just two. In 2023 alone, one paper favored the two-subspecies proposal while another favored the old nine-subspecies model (Wang, et al. 2023; Sun, et al. 2023). Giraffes have gone through a similar back-and-forth, between proposals that the giraffe is one species with nine subspecies and that the giraffe represents multiple species: the most recent analysis favors four species, each with a few subspecies (Kargopoulos, et al. 2024).
Far from being exempt, much research has been done on the question of human genetic diversity and whether this matches what we in other large mammals.
How Does Human Diversity Quantify?
Morphological and fossil evidence had been used in the past to classify humans into subspecies and races, but recent work on a more complete hominin fossil record shows without question that all Homo sapiens remains share more in common with each other than with other human species like Neanderthals or Homo erectus. There are characteristic features like our globular skull, prominent chins, and gracile rib-cage and pelvis which clearly define our species whenever remains have been found on every continent. There is regional variation in space but also time, and these changes to skeletal morphology have been shown as having more to do with environment, culture, and sheer chance than with relatedness to a specific racial type. Paleolithic humans have historically been difficult to classify with modern "racial groups", and there has never been enough time and distance to keep any one population isolated for so long as to develop distinct traits. We're really good at moving around and mating.
The difficulties in objectively studying differences based on morphology have let researchers to turn to genetics. One of the most famous studies was conducted by Richard Lewontin in 1972. He sampled populations from around the world and quantified the genetic diversity within and between proposed racial and ethnic groups. Here's Lewontin in his own words:
"The results are quite remarkable. The mean population of the total species diversity that is contained within populations is 85.4%, with a maximum of 99.7% for the Xm gene, and a minimum of 63.6% for Duffy. Less than 15% of all human genetic diversity is accounted for by differences between human groups! Moreover, the difference between populations within a race accounts for an additional 8.3%, so that only 6.3% is accounted for by racial classification" (Lewontin, 1972).
Lewontin's work was widely shared and referenced in the years since its publication, but there have also been subsequent studies that have essentially validated its primary findings: that there are more genetic differences between human groups within proposed races than between proposed races, and that human genetic diversity as a whole is pretty small. Just some examples: Barbujani, et al. 1997 reported 84.5% of genetic diversity found within populations, 5% is found between populations within a “race”, 8-11.7% between “races”; Rosenberg, et al. 2002 reported 3-95% of genetic diversity found within populations, 2.4% is found between populations within a “race”, 3.6% between “races”; and Li, et al. 2008 found 89.9% of genetic diversity within populations, 2.1% is found between populations within a “race”, 9% between “races”.
Furthermore, work has failed to find evidence of specific genetic variants which are "private to geographic regions (excluding individuals with likely recent admixture from other regions)" (Bergström, et al. 2020). It is quite apparent that Homo sapiens had a very recent ancestry and descended from a fairly small gene pool which has expressed itself in the remarkably similar genetic blueprint between all of us: "63% of variants common in at least one region are also globally widespread, in the sense of being found across all five regions. This number rises to 82% for variants common in at least one region outside of Africa." (Biddanda, et al. 2020).
How human genetic diversity compares to other large mammals (Templeton, 1998)
When all of this is compared to other large mammals, the genetic variation shrinks even more. A 1998 paper by Alan R. Templeton used a fixation index on a sample of mammal species to see where they stood on a spectrum between equally-shared genetic diversity within but not between populations and fixed genetic diversity between but not within populations. The results showed that global human genetic diversity was lesser than, say, the population of impalas in Kenya or all the populations of wolves across the Northern Hemisphere. Even among our fellow great apes, we find that the total diversity of humans is dwarfed by that found in regional populations of gorillas or chimpanzees (Gagneux, et al. 1999). Again, such results corroborate the findings of Lewontin and his successors.
How human genetic diversity compares to other great apes (Gagneux, et al. 1999)
Lastly, using ecology or behavior to classify humans into subspecies just does not work, because adaptive traits can vary widely between human groups, even within the same environments, and are also often determined by cultural or historical factors. So if you wanted to classify humans in this way, you would find that different "races" have adapted to the challenges of different climatic or environmental conditions inconsistently. Sometimes cultural solutions would overlap, but never always. Biological human ancestry does not parallel with behavioral ecology in the same way it does with other organisms.
In Essence...
Taken together, morphological, genetic, and ecological data have repeatedly shown that, statistically, these are not great enough to warrant classification into subspecies, let alone races. At no time has a human group been isolated geographically for so long that it is morphologically and genetically distinct from the rest of the world population. Human diversity is best understood as clinal, showing continuity between groups with little in the way of significant geographic barriers that are not broken somewhere in the world. Noah Rosenberg's aforementioned 2002 study utilized a software called STRUCTURE which placed genetic similarities into clusters which could then be divided into any given number the researcher provides. In this particular study, the majority of the clusters centered on five geographic groups that one could say support a division of humanity into five races, but (as Adam Rutherford eloquently explained in his 2017 book A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived) this would be succumbing to the sort of past subjectivity that painted racial anthropology: "look for clusters, and you'll find clusters". Rather than plugging these results into preexisting racial classification systems, wouldn't it be better to ask new questions? "Why do we see these groupings, especially if the rest of the genome, in fact the majority of the genome, does not show such regional variation?"
STRUCTURE clusters found across global human samples (Rosenberg, et al. 2002)
It must be stressed, then, that biological anthropologists today do recognize that there is clear regional variation between human groups. While we are all so similar genetically, we are not clones. The study of this diversity has opened up exciting avenues of research which have revealed key insights into the last 300,000 years of human evolution. But it is also with a strong and firm hand that it must also be stressed that race is an inaccurate, unhelpful, and meaningless way to understand all this diversity. In much the same way that most paleontologists and evolutionary biologists have done away with the essentialist Linnaean schemes that have plagued animal classification, so to have proper anthropologists abandoned "race science". As we've clearly seen at the start of this post, race science was clearly born of racism, and this is a fact that must always be emphasized whenever someone tries to argue about "race realism" or "human biodiversity": nearly of the time, arguments about the validity of race as a biological concept have racist roots, no matter how deep.
Representations of clinal human variation. A showcases a simple cline and the effect selective sampling can do in suggesting distinct genetic clusters; B shows global genetic diversity represented by continental-scale gradients (Maglo, et al. 2016)
For all this diversity, human beings are still importantly similar, moreso than many other large mammals. So much so that we can be considered a monotypic species: biologically we are Homo sapiens and that's as specific as we can get. Human subgroups do not fall under the criteria used to classify subspecies of mammals, nor any other category like breed (see Norton, et al. 2019). Though human physical & genetic diversity is real, racial classification does not reflect this; nor can a cladogram fully represent the evolution of human diversity over time, so full of admixture as it is. Our genetic past is a tangled knotted bush, not a neat pedigree-tree. Human genetic variation is statistically greater within populations than between populations, even when factoring in geographic clustering. All humans, everywhere, are closely related members of the same species.
In the next post, I'm going to specifically address the latest research into human diversity. What does the science say about our range of skin colors, hair shapes, skull dimensions, dentition, blood type, and other features of our anatomy? What about disease? Or IQ and intelligence? Some of the answers may surprise you.
Book References
Jeremy DeSilva, et al. A Most Interesting Problem: What Darwin's Descent of Man Got Right and Wrong about Human Evolution (Princeton University Press, 2021)
Paul A. Erickson & Liam D. Murphy. A History of Anthropological Theory (University of Toronto Press, 2008)
Alan H. Goodman & Joseph L. Graves Jr. Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (Columbia University Press, 2022)
Stephen Jay Gould. The Mismeasure of Man - 2nd Edition (W, W, Norton & Company, 1996)
Stephen Jay Gould. Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History (W. W. Norton & Company, 1977)
Philip W. Hedrick. Genetics of Populations - 4th Edition (Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2011)
Ibram X. Kendi. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Bold Type Books, 2016)
Conrad Phillip Kottak. Cultural Anthropology - 12th Edition (McGraw Hill, 2008)
Ernst Mayr. Systematics and the Origin of Species (Columbia University Press, 1942)
Steve Olson. Mapping Human History (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002)
Jonathan Pritchard. An Owner's Guide to the Human Genome (Standford University, 2024 & ongoing)
Josephine Quinn. How the World Made the West (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024)
Adam Rutherford. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived (The Experiment, 2017)
Robert W. Sussman. The Myth of Race (Harvard University Press, 2014)
Joseph Travis, et al. Evaluating the Taxonomic Status of the Mexican Gray Wolf and the Red Wolf (National Academies Press, 2019)
Paper & Article Citations
Guido Barbujani, et al. 1997. An apportionment of human DNA diversity (PNAS)
Anders Bergström, et al. 2020. Insights into human genetic variation and population history from 929 diverse genomes (Science)
Arjun Biddanda, et al. 2020. A variant-centric perspective on geographic patterns of human allele frequency variation (Elife)
Joseph T. Chang, 1999. Recent common ancestors of all present-day individuals (Advances in Applied Probability)
Pascal Gagneux, et al. 1999. Mitochondrial sequences show diverse evolutionary histories of African hominoids (PNAS)
Sasha Gusev, 2024. A molecular genetics perspective on the heritability of human behavior and group differences (Gusev Lab)
Susan Haig, et al. 2006. Taxonomic Considerations in Listing Subspecies Under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (Conservation Biology)
Nikolaos Kargopoulos, et al. 2024. Heads up–Four Giraffa species have distinct cranial morphology (PLoS One)
Richard Lewontin, 1972. The Apportionment of Human Diversity (Evolutionary Biology)
Jun Z Li, et al. 2008. Worldwide human relationships inferred from genome-wide patterns of variation (Science)
Leonard Lieberman, et al. 2003. The Decline of Race in American Physical Anthropology (Anthropological Review)
Koffi N Maglo, et al. 2016. Population Genomics and the Statistical Values of Race: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Biological Classification of Human Populations and Implications for Clinical Genetic Epidemiological Research (Fronteirs in Genetics)
Heather L. Norton, et al. 2019. Human races are not like dog breeds: refuting a racist analogy (Evolution: Education and Outreach)
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Sherwood Washburn, 1951. The New Physical Anthropology (Section of Anthropology: Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences)
Parade of Life Through the Ages Before the Dawn of History
Recently, I acquired through interlibrary loan a copy Charles R. Knight's book Before the Dawn of History. This was partially for my own nerdy interest, and partially because I was curious about it compared to his other books I was familiar with.
Knight was a wildlife artist and paleoartist who lived and worked through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was primarily through his work that the general public became aware of prehistoric life at the time, having appeared in magazines and books, showcased in murals at major American natural history museums, and ultimately influencing film media. Due to his extensive knowledge of modern animal anatomy, Knight was able to convey a sense of lively essence whenever he restored fossil animals that was considered near-unrivaled for decades; "he seemed to peer through the mists of time and return with snapshots of amazing creatures that no human eyes had ever seen" (Milner, 2012).
Towards the end of his life, Charles Knight wrote and illustrated a number of works in which he told the story of life's evolution on Earth, from Precambrian times to the European Neolithic. For this article, I'm going to compare and contrast these three works - two books and an article for National Geographic Magazine - to show how his perceptions of animal life and evolution reflected his life and times, and reveal a little bit of the man behind the world-famous paleoart.
Charles Knight at work on Stegosaurus sculpt in 1899 (darwinlive, Public Domain)
Before the Dawn of History was published in 1935, but its genesis was surely much older than that. In the book's introduction, Knight recalls:
"So recently as thirty or forty years ago, in these United States, the average young man obliged to take a course in either geology or paleontology was looked upon as a species of martyr by his fellow students, and usually regarded himself as a most unfortunate human being... today, however, and indeed for some years past this balky mental attitude has completely changed; and we now see hundreds of our red-blooded young men (and women too for that matter) crowding zoology and geology classes, thronging to the museum exhibits and lectures, and beseeching the college and museum authorities to let them join various scientific expeditions" (Knight, 1935).
There is a sense from Knight that, since the early 1900s and earlier, historical geology had gone through a sort of conceptual remodeling. The work of Darwin and Wallace had long been accepted; western North America, Mongolia, and other parts of the world had opened up unprecedented fossil discoveries; and most crucially, natural history museums had grown to become centers of public education. Knight felt strongly about conveying all that had been - and was currently being - learned to the general public.
American Mastodon skeleton in the old fossil halls of the Field Museum of Natural History, in 1949. Note Knight's murals in the background (Courtesy, Field Museum. [Photo Archives ID #GEO80736 | P25125])
During all that time, Knight was commissioned to create a series of murals for major museums that would arguably become his most celebrated work. For the American Museum of Natural History in New York, under Henry Fairfield Osborn & J.P. Morgan, he was tasked with filling out 20 murals of life in the Pleistocene for the "Hall of the Age of Man" from 1916-1923; for the Field Museum in Chicago, he was responsible for portraying the entire history of the planet over 28 murals from 1926-1929 (Milner, 2012). Knight was a prolific and passionate artist, and it is all the more remarkable that he was near-blind for the majority of his life.
Thus, Before the Dawn of History was primarily illustrated with copies of his AMNH & Field Museum murals, supplemented here and there with new pieces done specifically for the book, according to a March 14, 1935 radio interview with Elsa Geyer (Milner, 2012).
Knight opens the book with a general overview of Earth's formation - "the picture of the birth of our planet from the gaseous mass torn from the sun by a passing star" - essentially describing without-credit the 1917 two-body hypothesis of astronomer James Jeans. For those more familiar with the currently-accepted nebular hypothesis, it should be noted that during the early 20th Century this tidal model had a brief stint in popularity despite contemporary scientific-rebuttals (Woolfson, 1993). From there, a summarized history of life is provided that will ultimately be elaborated on in the plate section of the book.
One of the major highlights of Before is an extensive chapter "Fossils in Relation to Man", where Knight not only outlines the history of paleontology but provides his thoughts and methods for doing paleoart. Thanks to an posthumous unfinished autobiography and other correspondence (Milner, 2012), we know quite a lot about the artist's process, but to see him reflect on that for a general audience was a real treat for me. There is an air of humbleness in Knight when he looks back on this all-too familiar paleoart lesson after discussing the famous Crystal Palace dinosaur sculptures:
"No wonder then that his strange conceptions are almost unbelievable today, nor that we are inclined to watch our own steps still more circumspectly after looking at what were then considered truly remarkable reproductions" (Knight, 1935)
Knight even offers some advice as he describes his own past history, encouraging budding paleoartists to have a wide knowledge and appreciation of living animals, a clear understanding of perspective and composition, a strong cooperation with relevant scientists, and that this process "requires no end of research and patient application to details". Curiously, Knight argues with confidence that his dinosaur restorations are more accurately portrayed than his mammals, citing their "very pronounced peculiarities of form and skin covering". This is all the more funny considering that paleoartists today consider the dinosaurs his least effective work and argue that Knight did not take his own advice on rigorous anatomical reconstruction based on underlying anatomy when it came to extinct reptiles (Witton, 2018).
Cynognathus & Kannemeyeria of the Triassic Karroo Beds of South Africa (Charles R. Knight, Field Museum, Public Domain)
The plate section of the book is remarkably fascinating in that it contains some commentary on his past museum murals. For example, when discussing his piece "Mammal-like Reptiles from the Karoo Beds of South Africa", Knight sought to emphasize the more mammalian-relations to these therapsid genera by portraying the Cynognathus as pack-hunters coordinating their attack on the slower Kannemeyeria. For "no true reptiles would fight in this manner". Of course, it must be stated that therapsids are no longer considered "mammal-like reptiles" as in older literature: reptiles and therapsids share a common ancestor.
Knight's conception of dinosaurs is noticeably contradictory when you read his books. It is clear he viewed these animals with awe and wonder, often calling them "majestic", "formidable", and "delicately constructed". In the same breath, they were also "grotesque", "desperately stupid", and "clumsy". This follows general conventions among biologists of the time (Witton, 2018), where reptiles were "lower animals" with unsophisticated behaviors. Millions of years of dinosaurs as "lords of creation" was, to Knight, a over-bloated period of bizarre monstrosities in which our small furry ancestors were essentially being held back. Mammals were "destined... to rule the earth" as "leaders among created things"; this sort of language reflects, as well, the bias towards mammals in Knight's writings and with scientists at the time. This is all the more apparent when you see that comparatively more time is spent during the Cenozoic "Age of Mammals" in these works than any other time in prehistory.
Late Cretaceous Dinosaurs (Charles Knight, Field Museum, Public Domain)
"Drawings of Dinosaurs" from Before the Dawn of History (1935)
That said, there are many aspects of his writing that point to fascinating hypotheses and observations of dinosaur science at the time. As two examples: Knight describes Stegosaurus as bearing plates that were "fairly flexible" in their sockets, and he suggests that Brontosaurus, unlike other dinosaurs, gave birth to live young. These are hypotheses that were brought up by Robert T. Bakker during the Dinosaur Renaissance (Bakker, 1986), but have since been debunked by further research.
Moving through the Cenozoic Era, Knight described and illustrated fossil mammals from the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Australia, taking asides to discuss the evolution of horses and elephants and highlight bizarre forms like the chalicothere Moropus. Knight's love of elephants shines in all these books; at one point he describes the woolly mammoth as "the king of all land mammals". Some fascinating aspects of then-new research are brought forth by Knight, including the elaboration of early Native American ancestors by the discovery of the Folsom spear-points associated with extinct bison remains, which were uncovered in the late 1920s.
The great Megacerops, carnivorous Hyaenodon, and the giant tortoise Stylemys, in western North America (Charles Knight, Field Museum, Public Domain)
The book ends with a topic of immense interest to Knight, human origins and evolution (Milner, 2012). As listed in the text, the repertoire of good hominin fossils was limited to a "few scattered but supremely interesting remains", and the artist only felt confident to restore Neanderthals and "Cro-Magnon" people (Early European Homo sapiens). In these he supplied two AMNH murals, but produced specially for the book were two life-drawings of cave-sites at the Les Eyzies commune in France known for producing Neanderthal remains and cave art, respectively. Knight recounts at length his European family-trip to see such paleoanthropological wonders and was especially giddy to tell of his tour of the Font de Gaume cave led by the Abbé Henri Breuil (then a world expert on the Paleolithic).
"The Cave of Le Moustier, Les Eyzies, France" from Before the Dawn of History (1935)
Seven years later, Charles Knight wrote an article for National Geographic Magazine's Feb 1942 issue titled "Parade of Life Through The Ages". The format was much the same as Before, being an account of the evolution of life on Earth but in a more condensed format. This time, the illustrations are in color and all especially created for the Nat Geo format between 1939 and 1940. To supplement his work, there is also a scattered amount of black-and-white photographs related to paleontology, including portraits of Roy Chapman Andrews in Mongolia, the Crystal Palace Iguanodon sculptures, and the fossil hall at the Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., as it looked at the time.
Eryops in a Carboniferous swamp, for National Geographic, Feb 1942
In the text, Knight elaborates more clearly about the origin of life, specifically mentioning early cellular life and related modern forms like amoebas, whereas in Before he was content with a few vague sentences about "minute forms, microscopic in size". From there we see actual artworks depicting undersea life Paleozoic, including Cambrian forms, eurypterid "sea scorpions", and the great fish Dunkleosteus (the most Before offered were murals showing beached specimens and a reproduced photo of an AMNH Devonian fishes diorama). It is fascinating to be put in Knight's shoes as he writes about Charles D. Walcott's discovery of the Burgess Shale deposits back in 1910; consider that this would be the same feeling as us talking about the discoveries and debates of the Dinosaur Renaissance in our own time.
More animals are introduced to us in the article, including restorations of Ceratosaurus, Styracosaurus, Arsinoitherium, Toxodon, and there are even depictions of unnamed Ichthyornis in his mosasaur piece. Again, Knight's dinosaurs are treated with a weird mix of respect and disrespect. His Styracosaurus is at once an "armored beauty" and a "pathetic nonentity". One fascinating aside is a depiction of the great "Irish Elk" Megaloceros giganteus being hunted by Neolithic Europeans. It appears that paleontologists once believed that this species died out extraordinarily recently - in Before, Knight states the genus lived until 500-600 years ago - but the most recent evidence points to a final extinction around 7,700 years ago in Siberia (Lister & Stuart, 2019).
Finally, in 1946, Knight published Life Through The Ages. This is arguably the most derived of the three books, for it is notably stated in the foreword that he wished to "bridge the gap between the past and the present" and show prehistoric life in the context of living faunas. Rather than rehash an account of the history of paleontology, Knight gives a brief account of the contrasting views of Cuvier's catastrophism and Lamarck's gradual-change before diving into his plates.
Selection of cats from Life Through the Ages (1946)
While he included several previously published artworks from magazines and museum publications, the rest of the pieces were black-and-white charcoal drawings specially-produced in 1940. Even in this simpler style from his earlier murals, they are things of beauty and exquisite craft.
Because Knight's goal is to show past life compared to the present, much of the book consists of his life-studies of living species, with many animal groups given the spotlight where before they were barely mentioned. In particular, I noticed a whole spread dedicated to modern reptiles groups like lizards and snakes, as well as a sketch of Bushman the gorilla from the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, which is the only depiction of a non-human primate in all three books.
Much of Knight's views on dinosaurs vs mammals had not changed in over a decade. Life is perhaps the most insulting towards reptiles: Stegosaurus is regarded as "the stupidest member of a very moronic family", while the dinosaurs at the end of the Mesozoic are treated almost with contempt:
"All species were by now too big and too ungainly for their own good and though they didn't realize it, were doomed to pass away completely, for Nature has apparently grown weary of the great scaly cold-blooded monsters. They has been in existence too long, for they were stupid, unadaptable, and unprogressive. And so the world was to grow away from these slow-moving dunces, and little warm-blooded being, furry, alert, and aggressive, were to supersede them... It must have been a most depressing world as we think about it now, with huge, bizarre, and ungainly shapes rising and subsiding in the landscape, the earth covered with harsh and brittle scrub under tall palmettos..." (Knight, 1946)
Depressing indeed, but in many ways Knight was prescient of future discoveries. While in Before, he noted briefly but bluntly that "we may be fairly sure" that birds evolved from the dinosaur stock, in Life he is almost insistent of it. Allosaurus is described as a "plucked turkey" with "birdlike affinities", both it and Tyrannosaurus are said to have "curiously birdlike hind legs and feet", and Archaeopteryx is first introduced as "a sort of little dinosaur with wings instead of front legs, and feathers". This is all the more remarkable in that Knight is acting very counter to the general consensus at the time: while a dinosaurian ancestry for birds was noted by Huxley and others in 1876, much of bird origins research ground to a halt with the English publication of Gerhard Heilmann's The Origin of Birds in 1925, which argued that birds were related to but not descended from dinosaurs (Bakker, 1986). This was to be the consensus until the late 1960s with John Ostrom's research on Archaeopteryx and the newly discovered Deinonychus. My only guess for Knight's lone-crucade was that he had first studied closely under the generation of Cope and Marsh, both of whom had favored a "birds as dinosaurs" model, though the specifics of what type of dinosaur were not agreed on. Perhaps Knight had hung on to that all this time?
Brontosaurus & Stegosaurus from Life Through the Ages (1946)
One poignant note is that Knight seemed all too-aware of the decline in wildlife populations by the time he wrote Life. He notes how the baleen whales were "being destroyed for their valuable oil", how big-tusker elephants were "scarce... most of the finest of these... having been killed off long ago", and regarding the bison of Europe and America "it seems a pity that these magnificent beasts should have been killed and the race practically exterminated". We know that Knight made it a personal goal to draw the last members of a species in captivity (he did so with Martha the passenger pigeon), and that he had a vitriol for trophy-hunting (Milner, 2012), so to see such reflections in his own words at a time when modern wildlife conservation was still in its childhood is something.
In conclusion, two major things stuck out to me in my readings about Charles R. Knight.
He was an excellent writer and a wordsmith who could weave together a captivating story of life on Earth as he knew it then. There is something to be said about the more poetic and freelance approach to science-writing back in the day, and thankfully there have been many authors since Knight who have approached and achieved such prose.
He recycled his paleontological narrative frequently, and there are only a handful of distinctions between his choices of words and content between the three books. This is not a major criticism, and I suppose if you were only ever to read just one of his books you would, for the most part, be treated to the same meal.
It is fair to say that Knight is my favorite of the classic paleoartists. I grew up with his work through many of the books I owned and cherished as a child, long after knowing their scientific inaccuracies. To me, his artistic talents remain desirable even today, and for all the wonderful and beautiful paleoart out there right now, admittedly very few have left me as breath-taken as his murals. And, for whatever faults there may be from a modern paleontologically-minded standpoint, I can now safely say that Charles Knight was a spectacular writer too.
Book Citations
Robert T. Bakker. The Dinosaur Heresies (William Morrow & Company, 1986)
Charles R. Knight; w/ Stephen J. Gould & Philip J. Currie. Life Through The Ages: Commemorative Edition (Indiana University Press, 2001/1946)
Charles R. Knight. "Parade of Life Through the Ages"; in National Geographic Magazine (February, 1942)
Charles R. Knight. Before the Dawn of History (Whittlesey House, 1935)
Richard Milner. Charles R. Knight: The Artist Woo Saw Through Time (Abrams Books, 2012)
Mark P. Witton. The Palaeoartist's Handbook (Crowood Press, 2018)
Paper Citations
Adrian M. Lister & Anthony J. Stuart, 2019. The extinction of the giant deer Megaloceros giganteus (Blumenbach): New radiocarbon evidence (Quaternary International)
Michael Mark Woolfson, 1993. The Solar System - its Origin and Evolution (Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society)
Competing hypotheses for some stem-eutherian relationships, from Brady, et al. 2024
Placental mammals - clade Placentalia - constitute the vast majority of mammals alive today, with well over 6,400 species (according to the Mammal Diversity Database). The last few decades of molecular genomics have revealed four major lineages of placentals that have encompassed nearly all of this diversity:
Xenarthra - a small group of American mammals lacking many skeletal features in other placentals (e.g. stirrup-shaped ear bones), including sloths, anteaters, & armadillos
Afrotheria - emerging from Africa, a collection of bizarre forms including elephants, hyraxes, sea cows, tenrecs, golden moles, sengis, & aardvarks
Euarchontoglires - the largest group, whose members evolved an appendix (convergently with herbivorous marsupials), including rodents, rabbits, treeshrews, colugos, & primates
Laurasiatheria - a clade of vastly disparate morphologies, including shrews, moles, hedgehogs, bats, pangolins, carnivorans, odd-toed & even-toed hoofed mammals (the latter including whales)
It is well understood that laurasiatheres and euarchontoglirans are sister-groups united under Boreoeutheria, while it is less clear but generally thought that xenarthrans and afrotherians are united under Atlantogenata. Both of these larger clades correspond with ancient continental divisions, the boreoeutheres having evolved in the Laurasia; the atlantogenatans in Gondwana.
When looking at the fossil record quite a number of groups have been revealed which, though they are clearly related to living placentals, their classification among them has been quite contentious. Indeed, some of these may not even be placentals at all!
A distinction needs to be made between stem and crown groups.
Cladogram diagram (Philcha, CC BY-SA 3.0)
In modern evolutionary biology, researchers try to classify organisms based on shared common ancestry: this is the basis of cladistics or phylogenetics, and thus the representations of these relationships are called cladograms or phylogenies. A clade is the total group of organisms descended from a single common ancestor, constituting a monophyletic group. The diagram above is a representative cladogram, and the branching groups surrounded in blue and red are clades. But what about the yellow? Clearly, it includes a common ancestor and its descendants, but not all of them are accounted for. This is known as a paraphyletic group.
As well, the clades in red consist of groups which survive to the present day (that is, they are extant). But all the groups within the yellow space are extinct, and have left no living descendants. Sure, they may be part of a lineage that is alive today, but those particular branching points are gone.
So, groups which are allied to living groups but no longer survive are referred to as stem groups. A clade in which the last common ancestor of two descendant lines which both survive into the modern day are referred to as crown groups.
The clade Placentalia is a crown group, because all its descendants are around today. But there are also a number of related forms (stem groups) which are more closely related to placental mammals than to the nearest living group (being the marsupials), so all these mammals + Placentalia constitute a larger clade called Eutheria.
It's very difficult to know what the first eutherians were like and whether they were similar physiologically to placental mammals in, say, having a complex placenta with a trophloblast layer around the embryo (Rose, 2006). These don't fossilize easily, but bones and teeth tend to do better! It has been observed, for example, that eutherians tend to possess three molar teeth, two roots on the upper canines, and other dental distinctions (Bi, et al. 2018). Luckily for paleomammalogists, teeth are more readily preserved in the fossil record, but unluckily that means other aspects of the skeleton are not so well known. Concerns have thus been raised that some proposed relationships based on dental traits may say more about convergent evolution than common descent (Prothero, 2017).
Prior to the genetics revolution, evolutionary relationships were based on skeletal similarities that could be convincingly shown to be homologous or shared from a common ancestor, and for a good while a decent family tree of mammals was being built. Once it was demonstrated that molecular sequencing could reveal relationships, it revolutionized the field. This has meant a new classification for mammals, but also that now many fossil groups would need to be reconciled within these clades. And that hasn't always been easy. The more data is used, the more researchers have found conflicting results that some specific mammals are either stem placentals, nested within crown placentals but outside living clades (making them a new type of stem group in respect to the survivors), or belong within crown groups. It can get more than a little confusing...
In the most recent case, a 2022 paper revealed an entire branch of stem placentals that was named Tamirtheria and consisted of a selection of small mammals including leptictids, zalambdalestids, and asioryctitheres (Velazco, et al. 2022). Later research a few years hence questioned this, noticing that the way anatomical characters are ordered or unordered in a cladistic analysis can alter the branching relationships in the final result (Brady, et al. 2024). This meant that, depending which arrangement of characters is used, the monophyly of Tamirtheria could either be supported or not, and in the team's analysis, they rarely recovered the tamirtheres as a natural group. Instead, they found them as a branching system of stem groups leading up to Placentalia. So, for the moment, the recognition of this newly named clade is controversial, and more comprehensive work would be needed to sort out these groups.
Listed below are the handful of eutherian mammal lineages that have been, to the best of the most recent studies, the best candidates for stem-placentals. They are listed roughly in order of their divergence respective of the crown, but it must be understood that this sequence is not set in stone. There could be new research tomorrow that upends some or all of this, but for the moment this is what the current paleontological evidence tells us.
Parade of Stem-Placental Mammals
Early Cretaceous eutherians Duristodon (on branch) and Duristotherium (running) (Mark Witton, CC BY 2.0)
Until fairly recently, paleontologists have recognized three species that were claimed as the earliest eutherians. There was Juramaia sinensis from the Late Jurassic and Eomaia scansoria & Acristatherium yanensis of the Early Cretaceous, both found in the deposits of Liaoning, China. Contemporanous to the latter two was Sinodelphys szalayi, then recognized as one of the earliest metatherians (the total group which includes marsupials), and these fossils seemed to align well with the then-current molecular data showing a divergence of the daughter therian clades around 160 million years ago in the Late Jurassic (Luo, et al. 2011).
However, subsequent studies have cast doubts on all of this. Acristatherium & Juramaia may not be a eutherians but a stem-therians (Sweetman, et al. 2017), and Juramaia might not even be Jurassic in age but Early Cretaceous instead (King & Beck, 2020). Eomaia is more contentious: some analyses have argued it is a stem-therian (O'Leary, et al. 2013), and some argue it - as well as Acristatherium & Juramaia - are eutherians after all (Wang & Wang, 2023). In contrast, Sinodelphys may be a eutherian and not a metatherian (Bi, et al. 2018, Wang & Wang, 2023)!
A Jurassic origin for eutherians is still on the table somewhat, with other analyses showing a diversity displayed among other fossil mammals that suggests a pre-Cretaceous origin (Sweetman, et al. 2017). In particular, more confidently-placed early eutherians include Duristotherium & Duristodon from the Early Cretaceous of the Purbeck Group of southern Britain, Montanalestes from the Early Cretaceous of the Cloverly Formation in the central USA (Cifelli, 1999), & Cokotherium and Ambolestes from the Early Cretaceous of Liaoning, China (Bi, et al. 2018, Wang, et al. 2022).
Ambolestes and Cokotherium in particular are known from complete skeletons which preserve the middle ear bones, the hyoid bone (which anchors the tongue), and hair and body impressions. The phylogenetic analysis of Cokotherium supported the conclusion that it and many of these aforementioned mammals are the earliest diverging eutherians (Wang, et al. 2022). The mounting evidence from these more complete fossils and their recognition of Sinodelphys as a close relation has lend support to an understanding that early eutherians were far more metatherian-like than is generally appreciated: the anatomies of the sister therian clades almost blend into each other (Rose, 2006).
The clearest example of this is the presence of epipubic bones in more complete fossils of early eutherians, like zhelestids & zalambdalestids. While the epipubis has now been found extending deep into mammaliaform history, it has been traditional argued that in marsupials it functions as a support for the pouch. This has been called into question, as it now seems these bones function in a greater reproductive and locomotory sense (Novacek, et al. 1997). Prior to the late 1990s, the loss of epipubic bones has been treated as a eutherian trait "related to the evolution of prolonged gestation, which would not require prolonged external attachment of altricial young" (Novacek, et al. 1997). With these bones confirmed in the earliest eutherians, it now means that it cannot be used as a sole trait in determining a placental or placental-relative from other mammals.
Epipubic bones of a living kangaroo (edited, from Pierre-Yves Beaudouin, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Then we find other genera from the Early Cretaceous that ally more closely to placentals than these earlier forms, but the certainties of their relationships end there. These include Prokennalestes from Khovoor, Mongolia (Lopatin & Averianov, 2018), Murtoilestes from Transbaikalia, Russia (Averianov & Skutschas, 2001), and Bobolestes from Uzbekistan. These show the early eutherians were still primarily Laurasian in range at this time.
There is a rather enigmatic clade called Adapisoriculidae that has been argued in the past to have been related to either lipotyphlans (shrews, moles, & hedgehogs) or archontans (primates, colugos, & treeshrews), but recent studies show them to be early-diverging eutherians distantly related to placentals (Manz, et al. 2015). Fossils, primarily teeth and jaw fragments have been found from the Late Cretaceous to the Eocene Epoch in India, western Europe, and north Africa. They seem to have been roughly shrew-sized animals and little is known of their ecology (Rose, 2006). The most curious information regards Deccanolestes, whose presence in the Late Cretaceous of India adds to a growing discourse about whether land connections existed between the wider world and the subcontinent when it was an isolated landmass (Prasad, et al. 1994).
Another early group was the Zhelestidae which is known from more complete remains from the Late Cretaceous of Eurasia, Africa, and North America. They were generally mice-to-rat-sized mammals, and were primarily found living on "wetter, low coastal plain settings" (Nessov, et al. 1998). Zhelestids and potentially related forms show evidence of specialized cheek teeth (including five upper premolars) and jaws pointing to adaptations towards herbivory or at least greater omnivory (Kemp, 2005). Previously this has led to proposals that they have something to do with living ungulates or hoofed mammals (Prothero, 2017), but recent work supports a stem placental placement (Gheerbrant & Teodori, 2021; Archibald & Averianov, 2013).
Several studies have converged on the presence of a larger stem clade consisting of at least three major groups (Brady, et al. 2024; Velazco, et al. 2022; Halliday, et al. 2015).
The first of these to diverge is Cimolesta, a historically important group which has encompassed many varieties of Cretaceous and Paleogene mammals over many decades of classification. For example, the 1997 McKenna/Bell classification scheme saw Cimolesta as a ordinal-group consisting of pantodonts, tillodonts, taeniodonts, apatotheres, pantolestids, and pangolins; this order was also argued to be related to carnivorans and creodonts (Rose, 2006). Subsequent work has confirmed a relationship between pangolins and carnivorans, but the majority of these other groups have remained very contentious. Pantodonts and tillodonts may be related to ungulates (Halliday, et al. 2015; Bertrand, et al. 2023), while apatotheres may belong to Euarchontoglires (Silcox, et al. 2010); this would make these forms crown placentals, but as always these results are bound to be controversial.
In recent years the outline of the remaining cimolestans has gotten more streamlined. We can confidently say that the group is Late Cretaceous in origin, based on the remains of two clades: Cimolestidae and Pantolesta. Cimolestids - including Cimolestes proper, Batodon, and Maelestes - were small climbing carnivorous forms with shearing & slicing "incipiently carnassial" teeth that preyed across the Americas, eastern Eurasia, and north Africa (Halliday, et al. 2015). Rudolph Zallinger famously illustrated a Cimolestes on the day he signed his The Age of Reptiles mural for the Yale Peabody Museum in 1947. An interesting choice, considering this genus is also known from Paleocene and Eocene deposits, meaning that these mammals survived the bolide impact that ended the non-avian dinosaurs.
Otter-like pantolestid Palaeosinopa (ДиБгд, CC BY 4.0)
Pantolestans were far more diverse and ranged until the Oligocene Epoch across North America, Africa, and Eurasia. They seem to be united in their dental morphology, in which their four large premolars and three molar teeth with low crowns and rounded cusps (Rose, 2006). Such toughened chompers suggest a diet of toughened foods (what is known as durophagy), and indeed some fossils preserve worn-down cheek teeth. At least three lineages are included. The Pantolestidae had broad wide heads and a crest at the back of the skull which provided extra support for neck muscles. Based on the fossils of Buxolestes, Pantolestes, and Palaeosinopa, they appear to have been water-loving omnivores that feasted on mollusks, fish, and other freshwater organisms and may have resided in water-side burrows just like river otters. Postcranial remains complete this resemblance by showing the presence of flexible limbs and a strong, propulsive tail. The Paroxyclaenidae are solely Eurasian, and the best representative genus was Kopidodon (Rose, 2006). Built like a beefy-raccoon, these mammals had broad faces and walked on their soles, and the flexible limbs and long-bushy tail (known from impressions found at the famous Messel Pit in Germany) suggest that they were arboreal. Lastly, the Pentacodontidae are known primarily from skull material, but a few postcrania have been found (Rose, 2006). They seem like more robustly-built versions of pantolestids, and it has been speculated that the genus Bisonalveus was venomous based on the presence of grooves in the canine teeth, though this has been seriously questioned (Folinsbee, et al. 2007).
Taeniodont Wortmania (TheExplainer, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Of immediate interest is the status of the Taeniodonta. They appear to be closely related to the Cimolestidae through the genera Procerberus & Alveugena (Rook & Hunter, 2013; Bertrand, et al. 2022). Ranging from the Late Cretaceous to Eocene of North America and Europe, taeniodonts were a sort-of cross between an opossum, a beaver, a panda bear, and an armadillo (sans armor). They had massive, powerful jaws with enlarged incisor & canine teeth and simple cheek teeth that got smaller the further back in the mouth you go (Rose, 2006). The front teeth appear to have been increasingly specialized across successive genera like Wortmania, Psittacotherium, Ectoganus, and Stylinodon, and point to adaptiations for chiseling and rooting plant materials from leaves to twigs (Prothero, 2017). As well, they could dig up roots or pull down branches with ease thanks to long forelimbs tipped with curved, clawed fingers. The name taeniodont means "ribbon tooth" in Greek and was coined after an enamel band that grew on the incisors of Stylinodon, which allowed for self-sharpening.
Seen as relatives to the cimolestans are two sister groups: Asioryctitheria and Zalambdalestidae (Brady, et al. 2024, Velazco, et al. 2022, Halliday, et al. 2015).
The clade Asioryctitheria - as the name suggests - spanned the late-Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous Epochs of Eastern Eurasia, though this group seems to have died out prior the K-Pg Extinction Event (Kemp, 2005). They were tiny animals, with roughly 1-inch long skulls that somewhat resembled those of treeshrews (Carrol, 1988). The foot bones were built in such a way that the astragalus (a bone in the ankle joint) always touches the ground when these mammals are moving about. This is a small group, only consisting of a few genera known primarily from skull material and mostly incomplete skeletons: Ukhaatherium & Kennalestes, both from Mongolia, are some of the most well-known and are frequent representatives of the clade in morphological phylogenies.
Zalambdalestes (Smokeybjb, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The clade Zalambdalestidae is also only known from the Cretaceous Period of East Eurasia, though these forms grew a bit larger, with skulls roughly 2 inches long and a body the size of a rat (Kemp, 2005). These mammals were far from being rat-like, however. Recent studies on Zalambdalestes proper have revealed a powerful and agile predator. Fossils reveal an almost rabbit-like locomotion provided by a flexible spine and long limbs tipped with elongated toes (Chen & Wilson, 2015). Zalambdalestes likely bounded after insects and other small animals, catching them with quick-firing neck and lengthy, flattened lower incisor teeth; it may even have been somewhat spiny like living hedgehogs (Arnold, et al. 2024). Such a speedy-lifestyle would be beneficial for dodging attacks by small predatory dinosaurs, like the contemporaneous Velociraptor.
The remaining stem-placentals have been usually recovered as especially close to Placentalia (Brady, et al. 2024; Bertrand, et al. 2022; Halliday, et al. 2015), but as always such results do not exactly agree with each other.
Leptictidium (DagdaMor, CC BY 3.0)
The Leptictida are probably the most familiar of all the stem-placentals, thanks to the depiction of the European Leptictidium in BBC's Walking With Beasts (which likely earned its representation on, of all things, Nickelodeon's Jimmy Neutron series). This clade lived from the latest Cretaceous, through the K-Pg, and into the Paleogene Period, across North America and Eurasia. The earliest forms were Gypsonictops & Sikuomys (both North American), which are known from fragmentary but fairly common fossils of jaws and teeth (Kemp, 2005). Later forms from the Paleogene are far more complete and show animals with elongated snouts and thin, lenghty hindlimbs; the third premolar teeth have also been lost (Carroll, 1988). Included are the genera Prodiacodon, Palaeictops, Pseudorhyncocyon, Leptictis, and the aformentioned Leptictidium. The latter has been the subject of some discourse regarding the nature of its bipedal anatomy: the jury is still out on whether this animal ran on its hindlimbs like a theropod dinosaur or hopped like the mammalian jerboa (Rose, 2006). Regardless, the forelimbs were far from weak, and their robust-build suggests a use in digging. Research on the inner ear of a number of genera show that Leptictidium was fairly agile and fast moving, while Leptictis & Palaeictops were less so (Ruf, et al. 2016). Otherwise, like many of the stem-placentals, leptictids were fairly generalized skeletally compared to living forms.
One clade, the Didymoconidae of Paleogene Central Asia, has proven quite frustrating to classify and previous work has sought relations with groups as disparate as mesonychids, lipotyphlans, creodonts, and arctocyonids; the most recent work using material from newly discovered fossils loosely suggests that the late tooth-eruption and other dental traits point to a close relationship with the Leptictida (Morio & Nagel, 2002). Otherwise, the didymoconids are fairly mysterious as a group. We mostly have teeth and jaws - some of which are complete - show mammals with broad heads and deep jaws, sometimes studded with long canine teeth (Rose, 2006). What little postcrania there is (representing the genera Didymoconus & Ardynictis) include forelimb bones pointing to fossorial or burrowing behaviors.
Lastly, we come to the Palaeoryctidae, from nearly global deposits of the Late Cretaceous to the Eocene Epoch. It is unclear exactly how they related to other stem-placentals: they appear to be a closely allied stem branch to Placentalia (Bertrand, et al. 2022), but there is a unresolved question about whether they are close relatives of leptictids or not (Wible & Bertrand, 2024). Quite small, short-snouted, and shrew-like, palaeoryctids are among the smallest fossil mammals known, with the molar teeth of Palaeoryctes minimus being only a millimeter in length (Rose, 2006). They were likely shrew-like in habits too, having shearing & piercing dentition suggesting a specialized diet of insects and other invertebrates (Kemp, 2005).
Natural History
All of the earliest eutherians were small opossum- or mouse-like mammals that could rest comfortably in your palm. They scampered and scurried in the foliage and through the trees, snapping up insects and other small animals while avoiding being prey to smaller dinosaurs. They ranged across North America and Eurasia during the earliest Cretaceous (and likely earlier) and seemingly gave rise to a wide variety of forms that were globally widespread by the later Cretaceous.
By the end of the Cretaceous, several lineages survived the destruction, including the cimolestans, leptictids, and adapisoriculids, but many of the older more plesiomorphic groups died out (coinciding with the diversification of multituberculates). Analysis of Paleocene sites immediately following the bolide impact suggest that mammals recovered so well that they had almost recovered to their Cretaceous body-sizes by 100,000 years hence; by 700,000 years hence large and diverse bodyplans had originated in the increasingly warm and tropical environment (Lyson, et al. 2019). In fact, they may have done a little too-well, as scans of fossil skulls show that in the rapid increase of scale and proportions, mammalian brain sizes actually decreased relative to the growth (Bertrand, et al. 2022). This is a trend seen across all eutherian groups, including forms related to living placentals.
And what about the placentals anyway? Where do they fit into the story? Genetic analyses calibrated with fossils point to a Late Cretaceous origin for Placentalia, alongside all the other stem groups, but the various daughter groups outlined at the very start of this article do not seem to have emerged until during or after the K-Pg boundary, 66 million years ago (Carlistle, et al. 2023). Such recent work illuminates a decades-long discourse between the "Long Fuse Model" and the "Soft Explosive Model": that is, whether placental mammal groups had all originated in the Cretaceous and remained cladistically static until they began to diversity in the Paleogene (the Long Fuse) or whether the common-ancestral group remained static only to then diversity into the main branches in the Paleogene (the Soft Explosive). It seems like both models explain this pattern in the fossil record and molecular trees.
Recognizing stem-placentals has helped clear this up. You will have by now recalled how many of the listed clades had been allied in the past with living placental groups like ungulates, carnivorans, and lipotyphlans. This mattered because if it was true that they all represented Cretaceous placentals, then the entire family tree would necessarily have to extend to that time. Thus, by the discovery that all these fossils represent now-extinct stem lineages, suddently the divergence-data makes more sense.
In the end, these stem-clades lost out in the evolutionary story. By all accounts they do not appear to have been successful in the long run despite their diverse adaptations. By the Eocene and Oligocene epochs, the ancestors of living placental mammals had begun to expand around the world, growing larger brains with enlarged sensory regions and having behaviors that could respond to the increasingly complex and crowded global environment (Bertrand, et al. 2022). Somehow, the stem-placentals could not keep up, and today there are no clearly recognizable descendants of any of them, as much as paleontologists have tried to find them.
Sure, there are no more taeniodonts, zhelestids, or palaeoryctids running around, but the morphological and ecological blueprints of these groups live on in the over 6,000 different mammals we see today. Perhaps that is legacy enough?
Book References
Robert L. Carroll. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution (WH Freeman, 1988)
T. S. Kemp. The Origin and Evolution of Mammals (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Donald R. Prothero. The Princeton Field Guide to Prehistoric Mammals (Princeton University Press, 2017)
Kenneth D. Rose. The Beginning of the Age of Mammals (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006)
Paper & Website Citations
J. David Archibald & Alexander O. Averianov, 2013. Phylogenetic analysis, taxonomic revision, and dental ontogeny of the Cretaceous Zhelestidae (Mammalia: Eutheria) (Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society)
Patrick Arnold, et al. 2024. The Late Cretaceous eutherian Zalambdalestes reveals unique axis and complex evolution of the mammalian neck (Science Bulletin)
Alexander O. Averianov & Pavel P. Skutschas, 2001. A new genus of eutherian mammal from the Early Cretaceous of Transbaikalia, Russia (Acta Paleontologica)
Ornella C. Bertrand, et al. 2023. The virtual brain endocast of Trogosus (Mammalia, Tillodontia) and its relevance in understanding the extinction of archaic placental mammals (Journal of Anatomy)
Ornella C. Bertrand, et al. 2022. Brawn before brains in placental mammals after the end-Cretaceous extinction (Science)
Shundong Bi, et al. 2018. An Early Cretaceous eutherian and the placental–marsupial dichotomy (Nature)
Peggy L. Brady, et al. 2024. The effects of ordered multistate morphological characters on phylogenetic analyses of eutherian mammals (Journal of Mammalian Evolution)
Emily Carlisle, et al. 2024. A timescale for placental mammal diversification based on Bayesian modeling of the fossil record (Current Biology)
Meng Chen & Gregory P. Wilson, 2015. A multivariate approach to infer locomotor modes in Mesozoic mammals (Paleobiology)
Richard L. Cifelli, 1999. Tribosphenic mammal from the North American Early Cretaceous (Nature)
Kaila E. Folinsbee, et al. 2007. Canine grooves: morphology, function, and relevance to venom (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology)
Emmanuel Gheerbrant & Dominique Teodori, 2021. An enigmatic specialized new eutherian mammal from the Late Cretaceous of Western Europe (Northern Pyrenees) (Rendus Palevol)
Thomas J. D. Halliday, et al. 2015. Resolving the relationships of Paleocene placental mammals (Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc.)
Benedict King & Robin M. D. Beck, 2020. Tip dating supports novel resolutions of controversial relationships among early mammals (Proc. R. Soc. B.)
A. V. Lopatin & Alexander. O. Averianov, 2018. The stem placental mammal Prokennalestes from the Early Cretaceous of Mongolia (Paleontological Journal)
Zhe-Xi Luo, et al. 2011. A Jurassic eutherian mammal and divergence of marsupials and placentals (Nature)
T. R. Lyson, et al. 2019. Exceptional continental record of biotic recovery after the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction (Science)
Mammal Diversity Database, Version 2.2 (2025). Zenodo
Carly Manz, et al. 2015. New partial skeletons of Palaeocene Nyctitheriidae and evaluation of proposed euarchontan affinities (Biology Letters)
Pieter Missiaen, et al. 2013. A new species of Archaeoryctes from the Middle Paleocene of China and the phylogenetic diversification of Didymoconidae (Geologica Belgica)
Michael Morlo & Doris Nagel, 2002. New Didymoconidae (Mammalia) from the Oligocene of Central Mongolia and first information on tooth eruption sequence of the family (Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen)
Lev. A Nessov, et al. 1998. Ungulate-like mammals from the Late Cretaceous of Uzbekistan and a phylogenetic analysis of Ungulatomorpha (Bulletin of Carnegie Museum of Natural History)
Michael J. Novacek, et al. 1997. Epipubic bones in eutherian mammals from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia (Nature)
Maureen A. O'Leary, et al. 2013. The Placental Mammal Ancestor and the Post–K-Pg Radiation of Placentals (Science)
Guntupalli V. R. Prasad, et al. 1994. Eutherian mammals from the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichlian) Intertrappen Beds of Naskal, Andhra Pradesh, India (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology)
Deborah L. Rook & John P. Hunter, 2013. Rooting Around the Eutherian Family Tree: the Origin and Relations of the Taeniodonta (Journal of Mammalian Evolution)
Irina Ruf, et al. 2016. Digital reconstruction of the inner ear of Leptictidium auderiense (Leptictida, Mammalia) and North American leptictids reveals new insight into leptictidan locomotor agility (Paläontologische Zeitschrift)
Mary T. Silcox, et al. 2010. Cranial anatomy of Paleocene and Eocene Labidolemur kayi (Mammalia: Apatotheria), and the relationships of the Apatemyidae to other mammals (Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society)
Steven C. Sweetman, et al. 2017. Highly derived eutherian mammals from the earliest Cretaceous of southern Britain (Acta Palaeontologica)
Paúl M. Velazco, et al. 2022. Combined data analysis of fossil and living mammals: a Paleogene sister taxon of Placentalia and the antiquity of Marsupialia (Cladistics)
Hai-Bing Wang & Yuanqing Wang, 2023. Middle ear innovation in Early Cretaceous eutherian mammals (Nature Commnications)
Hai-Bing Wang, et al. 2022. A new mammal from the Lower Cretaceous Jehol Biota and implications for eutherian evolution (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B)
John R. Wible & Ornella C. Bertrand, 2024. Basicranial Anatomy of Leptictis haydeni Leidy, 1868 (Mammalia, Eutheria, Leptictidae) (Annals of the Carnegie Museum)
Mammalian diversity today consists of three major lineages: the egg-laying monotremes, the pouched marsupials, and the placental mammals. In deep time, there were many other groups which evolved from the same common ancestor of mammals and their relatives, but left no descendants today. Multituberculates ('multis' from hereon out) constituted one of the most successful of these groups, and even managed to make it through the great mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period, from which they well and truly flourished.
Anatomy and Phylogeny
The clade name Multituberculata means "many small tubers" in Latin, and refers to one of their diagnostic features: the premolar and molar teeth are studded with multiple tubercles or cusps (Prothero, 2017). The premolars in particular have been described as "blade-like", and in some forms, like Ptilodus, the last of the these are greatly enlarged. On average, multis have three-five premolar teeth and only two molar teeth on each side of the jaws. Similar to rodents and lagomorphs (rabbits & kin), the incisor teeth were long and curved (though they did not continuously grow), and they were separated from the cheek teeth by a gap or diastema. There were no canines. This would make the dental formula 1-3:0:3-5:2.
Lower jaw or mandible from Ptilodus (James W. Gidley/Smithsonian, Public Domain)
This peculiar rodent-like dentition is mirrored in the rest of the skull, in which the eye-sockets or orbits were placed on the sides of the cranium, and the zygomatic arch or cheek bones are wide and strong to accommodate large chewing muscles. But the similarities end there: analysis of the jaw joints indicates that they chewed with the mandible moving in a forwards-&-backwards motion, rather than the side-to-side or backwards-&-forwards motion typical of mammals today (Kemp, 2005). By looking at the wear patterns on teeth, it seems that multis did not gnaw their food but rather grinded and sliced it, and so may have had a broadly omnivorous diet that included small animals and soft fruits as well as hard nuts and seeds. There is even evidence that multis chewed on bones of dead dinosaurs! (Skutschas, et al. 2025).
From a postcranial perspective, multi skeletons reveal a wide array of forms resembling modern mammals like possums and squirrels, both ground and tree-dwelling varieties. More on this diversity will be elaborated in the next section.
Multis belong to a larger clade of mammals called Allotheria, whose other members also sported rodent-like skulls and diverse bodyplans. Recent studies indicate that the multi's closest relatives were the Gondwanatheria and perhaps the Euharamiyida (Hoffmann, et al. 2020), but a minority of researchers have proposed that this entire group is polyphyletic with its members spread across the mammal family tree (King & Beck, 2020).
It has generally been argued that multis evolved from the same common ancestor of the crown mammals (that is, the ancestor from which all living mammals descend), and this has been based on studies looking at the limited sample of complete skeletal remains on hand (Hoffmann, et al. 2020). In particular, they would be more closely allied to the live-bearing mammals or Theria, than the monotremes. More recent studies, looking at tooth morphology, have argued for placement outside of crown Mammalia, but not by much (Mao, et al. 2024). All in all, this suggests that the multis and other allotherians shared enough characters with early crown mammals that, regardless of where they are on the family tree, they would have closely resembled their common ancestor in key aspects. By all accounts, the multis have been considered "a very conservative group" on the basis of their skeletal morphology (Kemp, 2005).
Phylogeny of mammals & their relatives, based on dentition (Mao, et al. 2024)
The exact relationship of multis to living mammals would shed some very fascinating light on has been discovered about their life histories. It had previously been argued that multis gave birth to live young, because the pelvis girdle was built in such a way that could only support viviparity (Kielan-Jaworowska, 1979). The bone tissues of the mammalian femoral cortex (the outside layer of the femur) contain microstructures that show a correlation between proportional size and how long the lactation period is: a 2022 paper found that the time between birth and weaning in multis was most similar to placental mammals, and not marsupials (Weaver, et al. 2022). Thus, like placentals, the young were fed on milk for a brief period of time and could move freely on their own soon after birth, whereas marsupial mammals give birth to underdeveloped young that must move to the pouch and stay latched on a teat for an extended period of time to finish their growth.
It is remarkable to consider - should further evidence show multis as outside the crown mammals - that such life histories evolved convergently between the Allotheria and Placentalia. If more research ends up confirming the older model of multis as nearest to live-bearing mammals, then it could mean that the placental-life history represents the ancestral condition for therians, but convergence would still be a consideration on the table (Weaver, et al. 2022).
Diversity
The oldest known fossils of multis date back to the Middle Jurassic Bathonian age and span two regions: the Forest Marble Formation of Oxfordshire and Dorset in the UK (genera Kermackodon, Kirtlingtonia, & Hahnotherium) and the Itat Formation of Western Siberia, Russia (Tashtykia & Tagaria), both Eurasian (Butler & Hooker, 2005; Averianov, et al. 2020). In both cases, the fossils consist mainly of teeth - which is nothing new in paleomammology - but given the dental distinctions discussed previously, an alliance to the multis was fairly easy to make. In fact, the two key observations were made on this material, A) there is a lot of overlap in structure between these multi teeth and those of the Euharamiyida clade, cementing the possibility of a link between these groups, and B) the sheer diversity in tooth morphology in relation to the euharamiyidans suggests a potential Norian Age (Late Triassic) origin of the group (Averianov, et al. 2020).
Like many fossil vertebrate groups, the most plesiomorphic (with more ancestral traits) and the most apomorphic (with more derived traits) multis have been classified into two groups: the Plagiaulacida and Cimolodonta. However, in the most recent phylogenetic analysies, this diversity is better understood with the plesiomorphic multis forming a series of lineage splits prior to the evolution of the Cimolodonta clade (Carvalho, et al. 2025).
Restoration of Cambelodon by Victor Carvalho (from Carvalho, et al. 2025)
The earliest diverging multis consist of two sister groups: the Pinheirodontidae and the Paulchoffatiidae. The oldest known fossils of these date to the Late Jurassic, while the youngest died out by the Early Cretaceous. Pinheirodonts include the newly described Cambelodon and are primarily European, found in fossil sites within the Iberian Peninsula. All we have so far from this group are isolated teeth and a partial mandible. Paulchoffatiids are also Iberian but have representatives in England and Germany. The genus Paulchoffatia proper has a particularly "ancient" dentition, with the premolar teeth being rectangular in shape and more suited for crushing food than most later multis (Kemp, 2005). As well the molar teeth bore fewer cusps than what was to come.
From there a number of genera diverge, showing that by the Late Jurassic the multis had spread to North America while land connections were still established with Europe. These forms include Ctenacodon, which coexisted with the giant dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation of the northwest US states. Like earlier forms, Ctenacodon had the low-cusp molar condition, but now the premolar teeth had gained the long, shearing shape typical of the group (Kemp, 2005). Plagiaulax, from the English Early Cretaceous, was the first multi described by modern paleontology, having been named in 1857 by Hugh Falconer (a pioneer of the field in many respects).
The clade Eobaataridae was the next to evolve and are a primarily Early Cretaceous group of Eurasia. It's at this point in the fossil record that we have gotten far more complete remains, including postcrania. The genus Sinobaatar was recovered from the prolific Yixian Formation of Liaoning, China and revealed limb bones and digits (as well as teeth) that were less derived than the later cimolodonts (Yaoming & Yuanqing, 2002). One fascinating insight from the related genus Jeholbaatar concerns the evolution of mammalian ears. In this fossil, the middle ear bones were preserved but the way they are built in relation to the mandible or lower jaw joints suggests that they evolved this condition independently of other mammals like ourselves (Wang, et al. 2019). It's likely that it had something to do with facilitating the forewards-to-backwards chewing motion aformentioned in this article.
Thus we come to the Cimolodonta or "derived multis". They evolved in the Aptian Age, towards the end of the Early Cretaceous, would flourish into a wide variety of forms, and would reach their maximum geographic distribution. One genus, Corriebaatar, even reached Australia, likely from South America via Antarctica considering its closest relative was the Argentine Ferugliotherium (Rich, et al. 2009; Rich, et al. 2022). Cimolodonts have lost their first upper incisor teeth and reduced their number of premolar teeth to four upper and two lower teeth (Kemp, 2005). It's in these groups that the shearing premolars really come into their own.
The interrelationships of the cimolodonts has yet to be properly resolved, but a number of subgroups have been made out:
Fossil skull of Cimolomys (Albert C. Silberling/Smithsonian, Public Domain)
The Cimolodontidae, Neoplagiaulacidae, & Ptilodontidae clades are sometimes considered close relatives and were common throughout the Late Cretaceous Epoch & Paleogene Period of North America and Eurasia. The ptilodonts in particular had large, arch-shaped lower premolars, and the most familiar genus (indeed one of the most familiar multis) was Ptilodus proper (Kemp, 2005). Multiple species are known, and we have some good fossils that reveal a small omnivorous mammal with a powerful, flexible (perhaps prehensile) tail and tarsal or hindfoot bones which could rotate, allowing it to maneuver through tree branches (Jenkins & Krause, 1983).
The Cimolomyidae are found in North America as well as East Eurasia (Mongolia), suggesting they utilized the Beringian corridor for dispersal. They appear to have been quite common in the Late Cretaceous, with many genera approaching the weight of an average rabbit (Williamson, et al. 2015). Representative genera include Cimolomys proper (shown above), Essonodon, & Meniscoessus.
There are a number of poorly-known multi groups, including the Eucosmodontidae and Microcosmodontidae, all of which lived from the Late Cretaceous and into the Eocene Epoch of Europe and North America.
The Kogaionidae, in contrast, has become more familiar to paleontologists. In particular, they appear to have inhabited the now lost Hațeg Island of Late Cretaceous Romainia as the predominant mammal fauna (Codrea, et al. 2016). There is variation in the known tooth morphology that suggests a diversity in form within individual species (what is known as intraspecific variation) as well as between species. The genus Barbatodon sported red iron-pigmented enamel on their incisors and cheek-teeth cusps, much like some species of soricine shrews which is indicative of a diet of hard crunchy insects like beetles (Smith & Codrea, 2015). The genus Litovoi was even found to have a domed skull, highly-tuned sensory organs, and "one of the smallest brains relative to body size of any advanced mammaliaform" (Csiki-Sava, et al. 2018).
There are two particularly large groups of multis that represent some of the last known varieties and share a common ancestry, perhaps including the kogaionids, united by self-sharpening incisor teeth (Kemp, 2005).
One clade is the Djadochtatherioidea, which was primarily from Central Eurasia but also represented in European and American fossils from the Late Cretaceous through the Paleocene Epoch. These multis had evolved modifications in their jaw muscles which stretched them far forward on the mandible, giving the group a larger and more directed bite force (Kemp, 2005). Two related genera, Bulganbaatar & Nemegtbaatar, have had differing interpretations of their gait by different teams: these animals may have walked in a parasagittal-gait like living opossums or they may have been saltatory like gerbils, hopping on their hindlimbs and using their forelimbs as shock-absorbers (Kemp, 2005). This hopping motion has been more readily demonstrated in Kryptobaatar and Catopsbaatar, however (Chen & Wilson, 2015).
The other clade is the Taeniolabidoidea, from the Late Cretaceous to the Paleocene of North America and East Asia, which sported boxy skulls and had a tendancy to grow to very large sizes. Taeniolabis proper, from the North American Paleocene, was comparible in size to a beaver and likely was a ground-dwelling herbivore (Prothero, 2017). In contrast, Lambdopsalis from the Paleocene of East Asia was a fossorial or burrowing genus which sported a flat and broad head and fused cervical or neck vertebrae - features akin to moles (Kemp, 2005). This genus is particular is quite special in that we have a fossil coprolite from some unknown carnivore which contained the remains of its hair which forms impressions around the animal's bones (Meng & Wyss, 1997). Depending on where the Allotheria lay on the mammaliamorph family tree, their presence here is at least confirmation that the common ancestor of all these groups was furry.
By the Late Cretaceous, multis were widespread and represented by over six different clades. They witnessed the end of the world as the massive bolide struck the Yucatán Peninsula and closed the Mesozoic Era. Remarkably, save for the cimolomyids, the multis survived alongside the ancestors of the monotreme, marsupial, and placental mammals (they were one of the only other mammal groups to do so, in fact, for several other lineages died out during the mass extinction). There is even evidence of species on both sides of the K-Pg Boundary (Longrich, et al. 2016). Multis not only survived, but flourished in the aftermath: they form particularly common fossil in Early Paleogene sites in Europe and North America (Prothero, 2017). In many ways, their peak diversity was reached during the initial Paleocene Epoch, and the largest representatives evolved during this time (like Taeniolabis). However, by the latest Eocene Epoch, their numbers dwindled and they all went extinct.
Extinction
What happened to the multis? How could a group that was alive through the End Cretaceous mass extinction event and flourishing in the Paleogene Period then just die out?
Traditionally, it has been argued that the newly-evolving placental mammals, especially rodents and perhaps early primate-relatives out-competed them ecologically (Prothero, 2017). They had very similar skeletal anatomies, after all, and there is an apparent correlation in timing between the rise of rodents and the decline in multis during the Paleogene of Eurasia (Krause, 1986). Close comparisons between the two groups of mammals have given differing estimates of chewing biomechanics, with multis sporting lower bite forces but greater bite speed and rodents having higher bite forces but higher stresses on the skulls (Adams, 2019). Though it is suspected that multis had a broad diet, perhaps the rodents were able to better process the same foods, given that their lengthy incisor teeth could continuously grow. Not all paleomammologists accept that competition explains everything, and some have even argued that direct testing of such a hypothesis is "usually quite impossible" (Kemp, 2005).
For one, the appearance of competition in the fossil record is not so clear cut. Surveys of known fossil records show that while in Europe and North America the decline of multis is then followed by a rise in rodents, in Eastern Eurasia the diversity of the two groups fluctuated in parallel, and that there may simply have been available niches that rodents filled at the expense of the multis (Wood, 2010). As well, in several North American sites there is an overlap of 15 million years where multis & early rodents coexisted, with the multis inhabited fairly generalized niches (Ostrander, 1984). This has led some authors to conclude that the situation is more complicated, and that a closer look at climate and environment would provide better clues.
The Earth underwent a gradual cooling and drying of the climate at the end of the Eocene Epoch as the continent of Antarctica began to grow its massive glaciers. There is evidence of associated environmental shifts and faunal turnovers on land and in the seas (as outlined in my prior post on extinction events). In a recent 2025 analysis, it was observed that multis flourished most commonly in moist, temperate forests dominated by Metasequoia, Glyptostrobus, alders, and cone nut trees, while rodents tended to favor a wider range of habitats including oak, elm, pine, & chestnut forests (Burger, 2025). There is evidence that the former habitats shrank in range as the global climate cooled, and so the extinction of the multis is implicated to have corresponded more to environmental change than direct competition by early placentals like rodents. So the rise of these placentals would simply have been more about occupying new landscapes that multis couldn't survive in, instead of directly pushing them out of their niches. It is important to remind readers that many mammal groups - not just multis - experienced turnovers and extinctions at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary.
The reality of the situation is that more research on more fossil sites & remains needs to be conducted before any one hypothesis can be confirmed or refuted. We simply have no consensus on why the multis went extinct. There can be no doubt, however, that this was a long-lived and highly diverse group of mammals that should in no way ever be considered "failures" on the evolutionary stage.
Book References
T. S. Kemp. The Origin and Evolution of Mammals (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Donald Prothero. The Princeton Field Guide to Prehistoric Mammals (Princeton University Press, 2017)
Paper Citations
Neil F. Adams, et al. 2019. Functional tests of the competitive exclusion hypothesis for multituberculate extinction (The Royal Society Publishing)
Alexander O. Averianov, et al. 2020. Multituberculate mammals from the Middle Jurassic of Western Siberia, Russia, and the origin of Multituberculata (Papers in Palaeontology)
Benjamin John Burger, 2025. Comparative spatial paleoecology: assessing niche competition between Eocene North American multituberculates and rodents regarding forest resources to elucidate the cause of multituberculate extinction (Paleobiology)
Percy M. Butler & Jerry J. Hooker, 2005. New teeth of allotherian mammals from the English Bathonian, including the earliest multituberculates (Acta Palaeontologica)
Victor F. Carvalho, et al. 2025. Cambelodon torreensis, a new pinheirodontid multituberculate from the Upper Jurassic of western Portugal (Papers in Paleontology)
Meng Chen & Gregory P. Wilson, 2015. A multivariate approach to infer locomotor modes in Mesozoic mammals (Paleobiology)
Vlad Aurel Codrea, et al. 2016. First mammal species identified from the Upper Cretaceous of the Rusca Montană Basin (Transylvania, Romania) (Comptes Rendus Palevol)
Zoltán Csiki-Sava, et al. 2018. Dome-headed, small-brained island mammal from the Late Cretaceous of Romania (PNAS)
Simone Hoffmann, et al. 2020. Phylogenetic placement of Adalatherium hui (Mammalia, Gondwanatheria) from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar: implications for allotherian relationships (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology)
Z. Kielan-Jaworowska, 1979. Pelvic structure and nature of reproduction in Multituberculata (Nature)
Benedict King & Robin M. D. Beck, 2020. Tip dating supports novel resolutions of controversial relationships among early mammals (Proc. R. Soc. B.)
F. A. Jenkins & David W. Krause, 1983. Adaptations for climbing in North American multituberculates (Mammalia) (Science)
David W. Krause, 1986. Competitive exclusion and taxonomic displacement in the fossil record: The case of rodents and multituberculates in North America (Vertebrates, Phylogeny, & Philosophy)
Nick R. Longrich, et al. 2016. Severe extinction and rapid recovery of mammals across the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary, and the effects of rarity on patterns of extinction and recovery (Journal of Evolutionary Biology)
Fangyuan Mao, et al. 2024. Jurassic shuotheriids show earliest dental diversification of mammaliaforms (Nature)
Jin Meng & André R. Wyss, 1997. Multituberculate and other mammal hair recovered from Palaeogene excreta (Nature)
Gregg E. Ostrander, 1984. The Early Oligocene (Chadronian) Raben Ranch Local Fauna, Northwest Nebraska: Multituberculata; with Comments on the Extinction of the Allotheria (Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences and Affiliated Societies)
Thomas H. Rich, et al. 2009. An Australian multituberculate and its
palaeobiogeographic implications (Acta Palaeontologica)
Thomas H. Rich, et al. 2022. Second specimen of Corriebaatar marywaltersae from the Lower Cretaceous of Australia confirms its multituberculate affinities (Acta Palaeontoloiga)
Pavel P. Skutschas, et al. 2025. Evidence of osteophagia in Mesozoic mammals: multituberculate tooth marks on a hadrosaurid maxilla from the Late Cretaceous of the Russian Far East (Historical Biology)
Thierry Smith & Vlad Codrea, 2015. Red Iron-Pigmented Tooth Enamel in a Multituberculate Mammal from the Late Cretaceous Transylvanian “Haţeg Island” (PLOS One)
Haibing Wang, et al. 2019. Cretaceous fossil reveals a new pattern in mammalian middle ear evolution (Nature)
Lucas N. Weaver, et al. 2022. Multituberculate Mammals Show Evidence of a Life History Strategy Similar to That of Placentals, Not Marsupials (The American Naturalist)
Thomas E. Williamson, et al. 2015. A new taeniolabidoid multituberculate (Mammalia) from the middle Puercan of the Nacimiento Formation, New Mexico, and a revision of taeniolabidoid systematics and phylogeny (Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society)
Joseph D. Wood, 2010. Wood, D. Joseph (2010). The Extinction of the Multituberculates Outside North America: a Global Approach to Testing the Competition Model (Thesis - Ohio State University)
Hu Yaoming & Wang Yuanqing, 2002. Sinobaatar gen. nov.: First multituberculate from the Jehol Biota of Liaoning, Northeast China (Chinese Science Bulletin)
1938 postcard commemorating Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer (South African Institute for Aquatic Biology, Public Domain)
One of the most familiar and widely-celebrated "living fossils", the deep-ocean fishes known as coelacanths are actually far-removed from their remote kin.
Though their morphology betrays similarities with a few Mesozoic species, the sequencing of the coelacanth genome in 2013 revealed evidence of substantial genetic evolution across tens of millions of years (Amemiya, et al. 2013). And a quick glance at the fossil record shows that long extinct coelacanths were far more diverse in form than our surviving species. These are just some of the many observations that have led scientists to argue that the term "living fossil" itself should be retired (Yong, 2013).
Discovery
It has been roughly 87 years since humanity was reintroduced to the coelacanth. Though claimed to have long been familiar to West African fishermen, it turns out that accounts of the discovery have confused the local word gombessa/ngombessa with coelacanths, when in fact the term refers to the oilfish Ruvettus pretiosus. When Hendrik Goosen and his crew on the Nerine hauled up a live coelacanth from 240 feet deep on December 22, 1938, it was completely unfamiliar and believed by the deckhands to be a "great sea lizard". Fortunately for museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer of the neighboring East London Natural History Museum, the fish had been saved for her (Courtenay-Latimer had established connections with a number of South African fishermen to aid in research, and Goosen was particularly fond of her). She boarded the Nerine, observed the still-blue, 54-inch fish with much delight, and had it taxied to the museum.
Photos were taken, but by that point the fish had been already rotting and decaying; there was no choice but to remove everything and save only the skin for taxidermy. Fortunately, Courtenay-Latimer had made a small sketch of the animal and sent it to zoologist James Leonard Brierly Smith, who was then South Africa's only ichthyologist. Reaching him on January 3rd, Smith reached the same conclusion as his colleague: it had features resembling a lungfish, but was clearly distinct. Subsequent research lead Smith to the fossils of two Mesozoic coelacanths, Macropoma & Undina, and it was then that everything clicked. Thought to be extinct since the Late Cretaceous Epoch, Goosen and Courtenay-Latimer had revealed that coelacanths were alive and well in the 20th Century. Smith formally described the West Indian coelacanth as Latimeria chalumnae in honor of Courtenay-Latimer.
More work had to be done to be sure, however, as all that was left of the first catch was the skin. So following World War II (1946), Smith put up a reward poster in English, Portuguese, and French for £100 to any South African who could dredge a new specimen. It wouldn't be until the night of December 27, 1952 when another was finally caught by Ahmed Hussein Bourou and his friend Soha off Anjouan Island in the Comores. They had been in a dugout canoe over 656 feet offshore and had hooked one, killing it with a hit to the skull. It was brought to Captain Eric Hunt, an avid fish enthusiast, who had it salted, bisected, and injected with formalin to preserve its internal organs. An anxious and desperate Smith traveled to the Comores and finally met his fabled fish in a fit of sobs. The journey of discovery of these coelacanths is vividly detailed in the 1991 book Living Fossil by Keith S. Thomson.
Since that time quite a number of coelacanth specimens have been unearthed, including the recognition of a second species from Indonesian waters Latimeria menadoensis in 1999. However, throughout this period, the increased frenzy caused by coelacanths saw a sizable reduction in numbers (Plante, et al. 1998), and today the two species are classified as threatened and endangered species.
Miguashaia of the Middle Devonian (DiBgd, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Natural History & Diversity
Coelacanths are considered lobe-finned fishes of the clade Sarcopterygii (Greek for "fleshy-fins"), so called because the base of their fins are fleshy lobes supported by bone and muscle. Specifically, the skeletal structure of the fins are essentially blueprints of the arms of tetrapods: a femur connecting to a radius & ulna, which connects to a wrist and tiny digit bones, all of which is supported on shoulder or hip joints. Coelacanths (clade Actinistia) are distinguished among the lobe-fins by a particular arrangement of skull and tail morphology. Specifically, there is the triangular operculum which covers the gills, while the tail sports its own special lobe (the epicaudal) that aids in underwater locomotion (Prothero, 2022; Maisey, 1996).
They appear to be less closely related to tetrapods than lungfishes - contrary to a longstanding tradition of thought in paleontology - a fact that was initally argued from fossil data but finally confirmed through the first genomic analysis (Amemiya, et al. 2013).
Genomic phylogeny of jawed vertebrates (Amemiya, et al. 2013)
Coelacanths first evolved sometime during the Early Devonian, represented by two genera: Euporosteus & Eoactinistia of Yunnan, China and eastern Victoria, Australia, respectively. Already in Euporosteus (at least) we find anatomical characters of the skull and jaws mirrored in the extant species, including similar sensory canals (Zhu, et al. 2012).
Phylogenetic analyses do not group these as the earliest diverging coelacanths, however. That honor goes to the Miguashaiidae, which are currently only known from Late Middle to early Late Devonian fossils of two genera from Canada and Australia. A representative genus Miguashaia was shown above and showcases the plesiomorphic or ancestral state of the caudal or tail fin; it is asymmetrical like that of other lobe-fins like lungfishes.
The next to branch off were the Diplocercidae, which include the aforementioned Euporosteus and seven other genera from the Devonian to the Mississippian (Early Carboniferous). They are the first to exhibit modern coelacanth anatomy, with a double-pair of parietal bones on the roof of the skull and the triple-lobed tail. One genus, Holopterygius, has an elongated body which been described as "eel-like" (Friedman & Coates, 2005). Already by this time, coelacanth morphology was diversifying, and it is clear that they survived the various Late Devonian extinction events between 372.2 and 358.9 million years ago and flourished in both marine and freshwater contexts.
Next to emerge were the Hadronectoridae and Rhabdodermatidae, known primarily from the Carboniferous and Early Permian of interior North America, northern Europe, and Madagascar. A Greenland Triassic genus Sassenia forms a related branch. These coelacanths show a gradual decrease in bone layering (or ossification) within the skull cavity. One genus of Rhabdodermatidae (Rhabdoderma proper) has been found in riverine, wetland, brackish, and saltwater environments, perhaps suggesting a euryhaline lifestyle akin to many fish alive today.
From this point there is a major change with the emergence of the Coelacanthiformes during the Middle Permian (Ferrante & Calvin, 2025). Subsequent lineages have replaced their bony skeletons with cartilaginous ones, and their backbone is "incomplete" and even retains the ancestral notochord of far older relatives of vertebrates. Two important genera are Coelacanthus and Rebellatrix, the latter known from superb fossils that were described fairly recently (Wendruff & Wilson, 2012). These coelacanths were fast-moving predators of pelagic seas, with streamlined bodies and large, stiff fins.
Rebellatrix divaricerca (mamatlisham, CC BY-ND 3.0)
Obviously, coelacanths survived the End Permian Mass Extinction Event 251 million years ago and adapted to the reorganization of marine ecosystems into the "modern fauna". Surveying the fossil record, we find that the peak of coelacanth evolutionary diversity occurred in the subsequent Triassic Period (Ferrante & Cavin, 2025). All remaining lineages derived from the Coelacanthiformes.
Many new clades emerged in rapid succession: Laugiidae from Greenland, Europe, and Madagascar; Whiteiidae from global deposits; and the recently-named Axeliidae from as far as Chile & Svalbard. The laugiids in particular tend to have highly-derived anatomies compared to other coelacanths. For example, Laugia proper, from the Early Triassic of Greenland, sports pectoral fins located towards the top (dorsal) part of the back and pelvic fins which are connected to the shoulder girdle. This arrangement is more in-line with ray-finned fishes than with other lobe-fins (Thomson, 1991).
Lastly we find the clade Latimerioidei, which have mostly lost their peorbital bone (located above the eye-socket or orbit) and sclerotic ossicles (a ring of bone around the orbit). The part of the jaw which holds the teeth (the dentary) has become "hook-shaped" (Ferrante & Cavin, 2025). Little research has been done on the diet and feeding behaviors of latimerioid coelacanths past and present, with the most recent papers and observations showing a diverse diet of cephalopods, crustaceans, and fishes. Coelacanths do not seem to bite their prey so much as suck it up whole: one fossil of the Late Cretaceous Axelrodichthys contains an entire sizable fish of juvenile or adult age (Meunier, et al. 2018).
Mawsonia gigas (Cavin, et al. 2021, CC BY 4.0)
There is a great split within the Latimerioidei between two daughter clades which emerged during the Triassic Period, the Mawsoniidae and the Latimeriidae.
Mawsoniids developed ossified or bony ribs and lost or reduced several features of the skull (Ferrante & Cavin, 2025). Notable genera include Mawsonia, Trachymetopon, Diplurus, and the previously-mentioned Axelrodichthys. Fossils spanning the Mesozoic Era in the Americas, Europe, and Africa indicate that these were among the largest lobe-finned fishes if not bony fishes that ever lived; indeed, they are only exceeded by a handful of species from the entirety of the Devonian-Quaternary periods (Cavin, et al. 2021). They inhabited both freshwater and marine ecosystems and would have simultaneously been major predators of aquatic life and a good source of food for piscivorous dinosaurs and crocodylomorphs.
Latimeriids have an upper jaw (premaxilla) sporting at most four teeth, coronoid fangs (special teeth in the mandible), and have lost their spiracle, a hole for air-breathing (Ferrante & Cavin, 2025). This group survives to the present day in the form of the Latimera coelacanths, but there were many other genera from the Triassic to the Cretaceous, including Macropoma, Undina, Megalocoelacanthus, and Foreyia. The latter is a Swiss species from the Early Triassic, and despite being a highly-derived latimeriid, evidence suggests that it underwent heterochronic evolution (which occurs through changes in the embryonic stage of development) towards a more ancestral bodyplan (Cavin, et al. 2017).
Foreyia maxkuhni (Cavin, et al. 2017, CC BY 4.0)
Though coelacanths swimming in the Jurassic and Cretaceous seas were not as diverse as they had been during the Triassic, they ultimately fell victim to the great mass extinction that closed the Mesozoic, and only one lineage that gave rise to Latimeria survived. Why?
The Living Coelacanth
Today, coelacanths live in marine waters between 492 and 1,300 feet deep, close to the rocky extensions and caves of nearby islands (Nelson, et al. 2016; Prothero, 2022). Live observation has dispelled the long-held assumption that the lobe-fins are used for "walking" among the rocks; they use a unique fatty swimbladder-like organ to keep buoyant (Cupello, et al. 2015), and move rather stifly with the fins in opposite motion. They have glowing phosphorescent eyes, and their rich blue scales with white spots can be easily detected by others of the species through color vision (Yokoyama, et al. 1999). Coelacanths even have specially-armored scales supported by collagin fibril struts that provide protection from deepwater sharks (Sherman, et al. 2017).
Like other deep-sea fishes, they are remarkably long-living, with estimates from calcified growths on their scales pointing to lifespans of around 100 years (Mahé, et al. 2021). In general, they have very slow lives and only reach sexual maturity between the ages of 40 and 69 years, with a gestation of around 5 years (coelacanths are ovoviviparous, meaning they lay eggs internally and subsequently give birth to hatched, live young). Compare that to elephants and whales, which average about one-two years for one baby! Little is known about their daily lives or how they interact with others of their kind: observations published in 1991 show that they cluster into small groups and display fairly calm behaviors (unless two individuals touch, at which they quickly disperse), and they may range over an area of ~4.9 miles for at most two years (Fricke, et al. 1991).
As stated during the beginning of this post, there is no indication that coelacanth evolution has slowed down, with the recent genomic analysis pointing to continued evolution in recent epochs (Amemiya, et al. 2013). Fossil coelacanths inhabited a wide range of aquatic habitats and they seem to have been as vulnerable to the sudden environmental swings of the bolid impact in much the same way as other fish groups were. That modern coelacanths inhabit the deep oceans today - themselves dynamic ecosystems in their own right - is most likely a clue to their ultimate survival. That said, in the most recent phylogeny, it was found that the sister genus to Latimeria was Swenzia, which is only known from Late Jurassic remains (Ferrante & Cavin, 2015); meaning there is a significant gap in the fossil record between the two genera and there are many mysteries remaining about just when coelacanths moved to the deep ocean realm. As well, it remains unclear when the two living species diverged from each other: the genomic analysis failed to narrow down the previous estimate of between 40 and 6 million years of divergence (Amemiya, et al. 2013).
Much remains to be learned about these mysterious and increasingly-rare fishes. Though it is true they are the most distantly related of lobe-fins to tetrapods like ourselves, they can still teach us so much about the evolution of land vertebrates. As recently as last year, it was confirmed that pulmonary organs (related to the lungs) were preserved in the fossil coelacanth Macropoma (Cupello, et al. 2024). Not only that, but they were also detected in living coelacanths too! It was known for sometime that coelacanths had a vestigial lung (which is more developed in embryos), but this was the first time that a pair of pulmonary arteries was actually found in a specimen. It has been argued that ancestral bony fishes (including the first ray-finned lineages as well as lobe-fins) sported unpaired lungs, and now we have strong evidence confirming that the lungs of both fish groups are homologous, inherited from a single common ancestor. This can not only tell us how paired lungs evolved in our direct ancestors, but how those of the coelacanth became vestigial in the first place.
There is no doubt just from the sample of papers used to build this blog post that we are witnessing a rapid increase in our understanding of coelacanth behavior and evolution. Who knows what surprises we'll find next?
West Indian Coelacanth off South Africa (Fraser, et al. 2020, CC BY 4.0)
Book References
John G. Maisey. Discovering Fossil Fishes (Westview Press, 1996)
Joseph S. Nelson, et al. Fishes of the World - 5th Edition (Wiley, 2016)
Donald Prothero. Vertebrate Evolution: From Origins to Dinosaurs and Beyond (CRC Press, 2022)
Keith S. Thomson. Living Fossil: The Story of the Coelacanth (W. W. Norton & Company, 1991)
Paper & Article Citations
Chris T. Amemiya, et al. 2013. Analysis of the African coelacanth genome sheds light on tetrapod evolution (Nature)
Lionel Cavin, et al. 2021. Giant Mesozoic coelacanths (Osteichthyes, Actinistia) reveal high body size disparity decoupled from taxic diversity (Nature Scientific Reports)
Lionel Cavin, et al. 2017. Heterochronic evolution explains novel body shape in a Triassic coelacanth from Switzerland (Nature Scientific Reports)
Camila Cupello, et al. 2024. Pulmonary arteries in coelacanths shed light on the vasculature evolution of air-breathing organs in vertebrates (Nature Scientific Reports)
Camila Cupello, et al. 2015. Allometric growth in the extant coelacanth lung during ontogenetic development (Nature Communications)
Christophe Ferrante & Lionel Cavin, 2025. A deep dive into the coelacanth phylogeny (PLOS One)
Michael D. Fraser, et al. 2020. Live coelacanth discovered off the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, South Africa (South African Journal of Science)
Hans Fricke, et al. 1991. Coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae aggregates in caves: first observations on their resting habitat and social behavior (Environmental Biology of Fishes)
Matt Friedman & Michael I. Coates, 2005. A newly recognized fossil coelacanth highlights the early morphological diversification of the clade (Proc. R. Soc. B.)
Kélig Mahé, et al. 2021. New scale analyses reveal centenarian African coelacanths (Current Biology)
François J. Meunier, et al. 2018. The diet of the Early Cretaceous coelacanth Axelrodichthys araripensis Maisey, 1986 (Actinistia: Mawsoniidae) (Cybium)
Raphaäl Plante, et al. 1998. Coelacanth population, conservation and fishery activity at Grande Comore, West Indian Ocean (Marine Ecology Progress Series)
Vincent R. Sherman, et al. 2017. A comparative study of piscine defense: The scales of Arapaima gigas, Latimeria chalumnae and Atractosteus spatula (Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials)
Andrew J. Wendruff & Mark V. H. Wilson, 2012. A fork-tailed coelacanth, Rebellatrix divaricerca, gen. et sp. nov. (Actinistia, Rebellatricidae, fam. nov.), from the Lower Triassic of Western Canada (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology)
Shozo Yokoyama, et al. 1999. Adaptive evolution of color vision of the Comoran coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) (PNAS)
Ed Yong, 2013. The Falsity of Living Fossils (The Scientist)
Min Zhu, et al. 2012. Earliest known coelacanth skull extends the range of anatomically modern coelacanths to the Early Devonian (Nature Communications)
Brief Thoughts on What Jurassic World: Rebirth Could've Been
Screenshot featuring the film's Tyrannosaurus (Universal/Heute.at, CC BY 4.0)
So I went and saw the latest installment in the Jurassic World franchise last Monday, which was promised to be a rebirth of... something in the series? Honestly, as far as I was concerned what we got was an average summer-blockbuster action movie featuring prehistoric animals.
Now, I'm fond of the Jurassic Park/World series and I think the majority of them are fine films even with their varying flaws and frustrations. I thought the last one, Dominion, was a lot of fun and especially with the extended-edition brought a perfect conclusion to the trilogy while fixing some mistakes from the last two movies. It also brought a promise of future adventures in a world where non-avian dinosaurs, modern wildlife, and humans coexist. I was all for it!
So imagine my surprise (more like shock) when the first tricklings of information on the upcoming Rebirth came in, and it was decided that all that was set up would be thrown out the window! What?
(Spoilers ahead, me Primates!)
What I ended up seeing on July 7th was a return to classic formula for the JP/W franchise: humans travel to dino-island for xyx and chaos ensues. In the years following the release of non-avian dinosaurs around the world, it turns out that - somehow - the Earth's climate and diseases have caused a second die-off and the animals cannot survive anywhere save for the tropical equatorial regions. Now, it's not anthropocentric climate change that is implicated to have done them in but rather extreme cold, like winter snow. Humanity has become so apathetic to the plight of the dinosaurs that they've resorted to defunding natural history museums and basically erasing any mention of the de-extinct animals. The general vibe (to me) is like what happened with the COVID-19 Pandemic: yes, variants of the virus still infect and kill people today and the lessons from that time must always be remembered, but I'm sure many of us treat that period from 2019-2023 like a fever-dream that is better left forgotten.
From there, the main plot arises, and we follow the cast as they retrieve blood samples from the largest animals on a sizable Atlantic island that was a breeding-facility for Jurassic World hybrid experiments. All the while dealing with a shipwrecked family. But that's not what I'm here kvetching about.
Upon reading the production history following my theater-experience, I learned about David Koepp (co-writer of Jurassic Park) and how he essentially felt "put in a corner" with where to take this film. According to an article by AP News:
"By some measure, the world of “Jurassic World” got too big. In the last entry, 2022’s not particularly well received “Jurassic World: Dominion,” the dinosaurs had spread across the planet. “I don’t know where else to go with that,” Koepp says."
As well, in an interview with Koepp by IndieWire:
"Well, in some ways I think my job was easier by virtue of our premise of “they can’t survive.” You’ve done something that’s not going to work. What that premise does is it makes them special again. I think they told a very large and very ambitious story over three movies where dinosaurs spread throughout the world. Once that happened, you can go anywhere in the world and you can have as many crazy dinosaur situations as you want. I was more limited. I find limitations freeing ... So I think we actually had an easier time than the three “Jurassic World” movies because they got so big and that becomes hard to work with."
The subsequent production of Rebirth was also hemmed by a limited time-frame and by the desire of Steven Spielberg himself to relaunch the franchise in a unique direction away from what the previous trilogy has established.
Now I must be somewhat fair, and recognize that an individual writer probably works best with what they know and with projects that follow their natural workflow. I cannot speak for Koepp or Spielberg. But I also feel as though part of the writing process should involve some challenges and some risk taking. And in a film era of reboots, revivals, and nostalgia being constantly thrown at a general public who has expressed a desire for originality... was the answer really to go back to the drawing board and remake Jurassic Park but as a action/spy thriller?
I for one was severely disappointed, and the more I thought about this movie and chatted about it with my friends, the more frustrated I became. This was not only a lost opportunity but a perfect example of the on-going disaster that is modern Hollywood film-making. People cry over and crave originality but then flood the cinemas with attendance and allow these films to make billions of dollars so that more derivatives can go into production. I'm not saying someone is terrible for enjoying a movie, but it feels like they're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
And that's not to forget the proboscidean in the room: Jurassic Park/World has a near-monopoly on dinosaurs when it comes to film and other popular culture. It has been proposed that this series has such a wide influence that other attempts to launch projects about or featuring dinosaurs have almost always faced complications. Designs for dinosaurs in non-documentary media from movies to toys are often modified-clones of JP/W designs. And, frequently, these films are going to be the only way that non-specialists engage with prehistoric life. So it's no surprise that paleontologists for years have had to frequently comment on the franchises' loose dinosaur-science, and in the case of Rebirth the 'science' is so bad that it actually takes a large step backward from the very first film! I'd argue the original JP's perception of dinosaurs has never been surpassed in any of the subsequent six films.
Given what we know of paleoecology today, the idea that dinosaurs would not survive in cold, snowy environments is just preposterous. While the question of whether Mesozoic dinosaurs could survive under our modern atmosphere is tricky, given the franchises' lore, wouldn't the dinosaurs specifically made for the parks have had genetic modifications to allow them to survive in the 21st Century anyway? Otherwise, why make a Jurassic Park if all your stock were just going to die off over a few decades? And holy shit the film's paleontologist character Dr. Henry Loomis was a pretty bad scientist. I can't think of any good researcher today who would make such simple errors like thinking dinosaurs "were basically stupid" or lumping the other contemporaneous reptiles like pterosaurs and mosasaurs as Dinosauria. How many more people are going to walk out of this film and confidently regurgitate this nonsense?
Overall Rebirth had such a pessimistic air covering everything. A pessimism about people and a pessimism about dinosaurs. It was almost bleak, and it made it all the more insulting that the film had its "look how majestic dinosaurs are" scene with the herd of Titanosaurus but then never really addressed that feeling again.
Okay, I've been complaining long enough. I'm going to conclude this post with a few playful thoughts about what I think could make a good sequel to the JW trilogy that actually embraces the bombastic ending of Dominion:
The film should be set decades if not centuries into the future.
Dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals are here to stay, and they've managed to find a new niche for themselves on the world's stage. Given the state of the natural world at the time of Dominion, the dinosaurs would have taken over much of the space that was formerly utilized by the giant mammals of yesteryear, as well as filling in the gaps lost by our modern megamammals that have had their wild populations severely depleted due to overhunting and habitat destruction. The most common large herbivores are not bison or elephants but ceratopsians and hadrosaurs. The apex predators are no longer lions or tigers but tyrannosaurs and allosaurs. Marine reptiles have repopulated areas where whale numbers have plummeted.
Just imagine how the ecology would look if this continued to play out over decades or even centuries? Already humans had taken to using dinosaurs as pets, guardians, weapons, food, and sources of pharmaceuticals (as played out most heavily in Dominion). Now picture them being fully integrated into human agriculture and land management! Think about considerations taken for dinosaurs by urban development and park planning. Think about the new breeds of dinosaurs that could be created that supply people with food or "designer dinosaurs" that function like dogs, cats, or horses. Think of the bonds that could form between societies and their neighboring dinosaurs: new philosophies, new beliefs, new ways of thinking about nature, or even returns to old ways of thinking, or both!
This would make the sequel an exercise in speculative history, about how human cultures would look if the world suddenly regained its collective of large and obvious animals but under a different guise. Societal change happens slowly or quickly depending on the circumstances, and I imagine human civilization would take on new and interesting routes if dinosaurs returned to the world and we chose to embrace Dr. Charlotte Lockwood's closing monologue.
The film should take place in a non-western/American setting.
It's frankly pretty obvious that the Jurassic Park/World series has been primarily centered around characters from the United States and the United Kingdom. This is not a criticism, but an observation that naturally leads into yet another way a JW sequel could be different and original.
Change the setting! Have it take place in future Ghana, or South Korea, or in Turkey. Hell, all these dinosaur islands have been near Costa Rica, so why not set the story there or elsewhere in Central America? Instead of following another ex-military operative or executive, why not check in on an average family with no major ties to any major government or organization? I think it could be fun to set a film around a birder or amateur naturalist who cares deeply about the dinosaurs, who perhaps gets involved in some conflict between the animals and a local community, or even two communities with conflicting interests.
Ideally, no matter where we are, the setting should not have anything to do with Jurassic World or a related genetics facility. Let's try to avoid retreading old ground and truly see what it means to live in a Jurassic World.
The film should embrace new dinosaur designs that match the science.
It's time to throw out Blue and Rexy and all the other classic dinosaurs that have remained with this franchise from the beginning. Enough has been said about the frustrations we had with the first Jurassic World and Colin Trevorrow's "no feathers" tweet: if we're serious about a "rebirth", let's just go all in. Give us Prehistoric Planet-quality dinosaurs that look as good as paleontology can provide. They can still be personalities but at least they would look like actual dinosaurs in the way that the first film embraced Renaissance-era animals. Modern CG is so good now and Hollywood budgets are so massive that there should be no excuses about rendering feathered dinosaurs. I've seen more than enough excellent CG recreations of modern animals (e.g. the giraffe from The Last of Us, or even those capuchins from Rebirth itself) to know that we could get spectacular designs.
Lastly, the film should not be afraid to have fun with its premise.
Given the ever-increasing insanity that was the Jurassic World trilogy - from rampaging hybrid dinosaurs to the US weaponizing dinosaurs to fight terrorists to a cloned Tyrannosaurus having a brief channel with its parent across 66 million years - there's nothing stopping a sequel from embracing a little more insanity. That's not to say that I think a good sequel should echo The Flintstones or Dinosaur Train, but I do think that a good test of originality is to throw anything at the wall and see what sticks with audiences. This franchise was already asking its viewers to accept Mesozoic dinosaurs coexisting with humans, why not take the next step?
It's not like this is a premise that hasn't been explored properly before. My immediate go-to for this sort of this is the iconic Dinotopia series by James Gurney. This is a wonderful and beautifully-illustrated series of books detailing a father-and-son team washing ashore on an undiscovered landmass with a long and multifaceted history of contact between humans and prehistoric animals, with the dinosaurs having their own society and language. In many ways this series has fully-fleshed out what a Jurassic World could look like at some point in the future. There's also a little-known series of young-adult novels called The World of Supersaurs by Jay Jay Burridge, which is set in an alternate late-19th Century where dinosaurs never went extinct and co-evolved alongside humans. Frequent plots involve colonialism and exploitation of the dinosaurs for profit, and there are several characters who form close bonds with particular dinosaurs (Spear & Fang style).
I do not necessarily think that a Jurassic World sequel should follow these exact routes, but what I'm arguing is that other writers with a passion for prehistory have taken the same premise left-open by Dominion (a world where humans and dinosaurs co-exist) and not only ran with it but managed to do so for successive installments.
There should not have been any excuse or issue with being "written into a corner", and there's no shortage of imagination that can be used to truly craft an excellent sequel. I don't know if I speak for everyone or anyone, but I think it's safe to say that a golden opportunity was lost with Rebirth and we may be doomed to a creatively-bankrupt trilogy that will probably make us look far less harshly on the Jurassic World trilogy than we do know.
And all we can say is that it did not necessarily have to be this way.
Postosuchus, one of the crocodylomorphs of the Triassic (FunkMonk, Public Domain)
Continuing my overview of the Earth's extinction events! Part 1 covered the 'Precambrian' and Paleozoic, and so Part 2 will conclude with the Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras.
Smithian-Spathian Boundary Event
When? - ~249.9 Million Years Ago (Olenekian Age, Early Triassic)
Cause - The Siberian Traps still had a little juice in them, and briefly experienced a few more eruptions which were enough to recharge ocean anoxia and an increase in volcanic carbon leading to global warming (Du, etal. 2022).
Victims - Life was on the road to recovery following the Great Dying, even following a massive spike in global temperatures facilitated by the loss of forests (Xu, et al. 2025). Surveys of fossil communities point to the Smithian-Spathian being particularly disruptive to regrowth: many species survived the destruction only to perish almost immediately afterward. Lystrosaurus, one of the most common of the dicynodont protomammals, went extinct, as did contemporaneous tetrapods like the archosauriform Proterosuchus. In the seas, life was hit equally hard, with losses among conodonts, ammonoids, bivalves, and other marine invertebrates, while radiolarians (amoeba-like, shelled plankton) suffered extinctions.
Survivors - It appears that bony fishes and the ancestors of marine reptiles survived through the harsh conditions, and it's widely understood that ichthyosaurs and sauropterygians (placodonts & proto-plesiosaurs) experienced an adaptive radiation afterward, preying on the many newly evolving fishes. They would become some of the major marine vertebrates of the Mesozoic Era. Among marine invertebrates, the start of the Triassic marks the origin of the "Modern Fauna", mainly composed of bivalves, gastropods, echinoderms, and crustaceans.
Carnian Pluvial Episode
When? - ~234-232 Million Years Ago
Cause - Climate warming coincides with increased moisture in the atmosphere, and it appears that the hot-house conditions of the Triassic Period facilitated the appearance of megamonsoons which dumped rains across the Pangaean supercontinent for roughly 2 million years. Such persistent rainfall affected the rock and water cycles and turned large areas of the land into humid, wetland environments (Corso, et al. 2020).
Victims - Such a change in the water cycle shifted both marine and freshwater communities, and there were extinctions among mollusks, crinoids (isocrinids died out), corals, bryozoans, conodonts, bony fishes, and planktonic forms. On land, tetrapods experienced losses, primarily among herbivorous varieties like rhynchosaurs and dicynodonts.
Survivors - The spread of wetlands encouraged the growth of new forests, and ferns, conifers, and cycadeoids (stem-angiosperms) experienced increased biodiversity. Fossil evidence points to the rise of dinosaurs, crocodylomorphs, turtles, lepidosaurs (lizards & tuataras) and mammaliaforms during the Carnian Pluvial Episode, meaning that essentially all the modern land vertebrate groups evolved, perhaps, in response to the changes (Corso, et al. 2020). In the oceans new life took root with the first scleractinian corals (the group to which modern stony corals belong), though it wasn't until several million years later when they formed a symbiotic relationship with zooxanthellae algae that coral reefs developed. Importantly, zooxanthellae belong to the dinoflagellate group, which also shared an origin during the Carnian alongside the chalk-forming coccolithophore plankton. Neopterygians - ray-finned fishes with lightened scales and skeletons - and the proto-sharks and rays (or neoselachians) experienced an adaptive radiation as well.
End Triassic Mass Extinction
When? - 201.4 Million Years Ago
Cause - Pangaea was in the beginning stages of break-up, and one of the first areas of release was between the future continents of North America and Eurasia. In the proto-North Atlantic, massive lava flows marked the boundaries of separation and are recorded in the rock record as the Central Atlantic magmatic province or CAMP (Whalen, et al. 2015). Correlations between geologic dating and the timing of extinctions have pointed strongly to CAMP being one of the leading causes of the mass extinction (Deenen, et al. 2010; Bond & Grasby, 2017). As much as 720,000 cubic-miles of lava may have pooled across the northern hemisphere (Benton, 2023). Such enormous volcanic outpourings would have contributed to climatic warming and ocean acidification & anoxia as they erupted over an estimated 600,000 year period in four pulses (Bond & Grasby, 2017).
Victims - In the oceans, the scleractinian corals faced their harshest extinction event before the present. Among the other marine losses was the total extinction of the lamprey-like conodonts, and ammonoid diversity plummeted so much that only one lineage survived to give rise to the famous ammonites of the Jurassic & Cretaceous oceans. Conulariids, a bizarre group related to jellyfish, also went extinct after having lived through the entire Paleozoic Era. On land, plants suffered a drop in biodiversity across several regions, and the CAMP was a decisive turning-point in amniote evolution. This extinction event was the death-nail for many of the crocodylomorphs and remaining therapsid protomammals (specifically dicynodonts and therocephalians), whose lines ended before the Triassic closed out. The giant temnospondyls would never recover their past diversity: metoposaurs and pelagiosaurids would go extinct. Many marine or coastal reptile groups died out, including the placodonts and long-necked tanystropheids. Reptiles as a whole were severely reduced in diversity, with parareptiles, many archosauromorphs, and the other so-called "Triassic weirdos" going extinct.
Survivors - It would be the dinosaurs who would take up the major terrestrial niches on land for the remainder of the Mesozoic, having outlasted the other reptile groups and having their own adaptive radiation. Of the therapsids, only the mammaliaforms survived to give rise to crown mammals in the Jurassic Period. Of the temnospondyls, the lissamphibians (frogs, salamanders, caecilians) would diversify across forested and wetland ecosystems. Of the marine reptiles, only the plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs survived. Pterosaurs, the flying reptiles closely related to dinosaurs, had evolved prior to CAMP, and would go on to rule the skies.
Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event
When? - ~183 Million Years Ago (Early Jurassic Period)
Cause - A minor extinction event that occurred in about six pulses as a result of volcanic activity and ocean anoxia (Caruthers, et al. 2013). The eruptions of the Karoo and Ferrar Traps in South Africa have been linked, which may have also released methane as well as CO2 into the atmosphere. There is evidence to suggest extensive wildfires and acid rain affected life on land (Reolid, et al. 2022).
Victims - As a result of ocean anoxia, this event was particularly rough for shelled marine invertebrates, like ammonites, bivalves brachiopods, and ostracods. Forams, radiolarians, and dinoflagellate plankton were hit hard. Marine reptiles experienced severe losses, with a number of plesiosaur and ichthyosaur clades going extinct (including the giant predatory temnodontosaurids). Dinosaur and plant diversity appears to have been impacted by the Traps eruptions: fossil sites show a decline in gymnosperms, cycadeoids, seed ferns, true ferns, and lycopods, and there are notable extinctions of many lineages of early sauropodomorphs (traditionally known as "prosauropods") and thyreophorans (e.g. Scelidosaurus) as well as the coelophysoid predators who preyed on them (in addition to the related, double head-crested Dilophosaurus).
Survivors - Thalattosuchians, ocean-adapted crocodylomorphs seem to have taken over some of the niches of the lost marine reptile groups. Terrestrial ecosystems experienced a shift from the earlier high-diversity communities to substantially lower-diversity forests primarily composed of conifers and cycads (Slater, et al. 2019). Dinosaurs experienced a turnover in diversity, with the earlier predatory forms being replaced by allosauroids, megalosauroids, and tyrannosauroids; while the herbivores were replaced by larger and more derived sauropods, stegosaurs, and ankylosaurs (Reolid, et al. 2022). Recent evidence shows that insects may have benefited from the anoxic event by feasting on the dead fish corpses and newly-evolved plants (Swaby, et al. 2024).
Tithonian Extinction
When? - ~143 Million Years Ago (Late Jurassic Period)
Cause - An area of ongoing and controversial research, there is growing evidence of one or a number of events occurring at the end of the Jurassic Period that could be regarded as an extinction event, as there is evidence of both environmental change and faunal turnover at this time (Tennant, et al. 2016). Proposed causes include volcanic activity and even bolide impacts, which contributed to falling sea levels and a general cooling & drying of the global climate.
Victims - There is evidence of diversity loss at regional levels across many taxa, from marine mollusks to dinosaurs. Scleractinian coral reefs were badly hit, and there was a large decline in decapod crustaceans, ammonites, and bivalves; among the latter, heteroconchs (the cockle & unionid mussle clade) and lucinids (hatchet clams) experienced losses. Lineages of freshwater fishes, turtles, and plesiosaurs died out. The long-tailed pterosaurs (traditionally known as "rhamphorhynchoids") died out. Among dinosaurs, there was a particularly noticable turnover in forms: predatory ceratosaurids, megalosaurids, and allosaurids went extinct; many clades of sauropods suffered losses; and the stegosaurs lost considerable diversity.
Survivors - Rudists, a clade of bivalves, replaced the scleractinians as the ocean's major reef-building organisms for the remainder of the Mesozoic Era. Both gastropods and brachiopods seemed to have been unaffected by the changes. Marine fishes, and sharks & rays as a whole, seemed to do well, as did the reptilian ichthyosaurs and thalattosuchians. Notosuchian crocodylomorphs evolved right after the Jurassic extinction, encompassing a diverse group of land-living forms. Pterodactyloids - the short-tailed pterosaurs - persisted and underwent a burst in evolutionary change. Though the major groups of dinosaurs were more or less established long before the end of the Jurassic, it wasn't until afterward that they experienced another burst of evolution. New species of ceratopsians, ornithopods, ankylosaurs, titanosaurs, allosauroids, megalosauroids, and coelurosaurs (including new lineages of birds) evolved across the continents.
Cycadeoid, a type of stem-angiosperm (Matteo De Stefano/MUSE, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Aptian-Albian Extinction
When? - ~117-113 Million Years Ago (Early Cretaceous Epoch)
Cause - Volcanic eruptions in the South Asian Rahjamal Traps appear to have spurred a period of high global temperatures and ocean anoxia, designated at "OAE1" (Benton, 2023). The oceans, at least, experienced a cooling trend by the early Albian Age (Balestra, et al. 2025).
Victims - The Aptian Event is said to have been one of the major die-offs of foraminifera in the Earth's history, impacting populations from the Atlantic to the Tethys (Balestra, et al. 2025). Extinctions on land appear to have been more regional in scope and mainly affected plant communities: a number of ginkgo, conifer, and cycadeloid genera went extinct (Archangelsky, 2001).
Survivors - While gymnosperms, cycadeoids, and ferns as a whole did not suffer tremendous losses, the early angiosperms (flowering plants) would ultimately experience a burst in biodiversity. By 100 million years ago, the "Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution" would bring a significant shift in the ecological relationships between plants and animals, particularly among insects and herbivorous tetrapods (Benton, et al. 2021).
Cenomanian-Turonian Extinction
When? - ~94.5-90.3 Million Years Ago (Late Cretaceous Epoch)
Cause - As in the Aptian-Albian, the oceans underwent another anoxic event - "OAE2" - that was paralleled by a sharp rise in global sea levels and temperatures (Petrizzo, et al. 2022; Arthur, et al. 1988). These are linked to volcanic lava flows in both the newly-forming Caribbean Sea and in Madagascar as it separated from the Indian Subcontinent (Kuroda, et al. 2007), but other areas of the world seem to have contributed with their own eruptions (Petrizzo, et al. 2022). The transition from the Early to Late Cretaceous Epochs was thus marked by a dynamic shift in the Earth's climate and oceans.
Victims - There was a significant turnover of Mesozoic marine life, particularly among plankton (many coccoliths, forams, radiolarians, and dinoflagellates went extinct), mollusks (many rudists and ammonites went extinct), and sea-going reptiles (ichthyosaurs and the large-headed plesiosaurs called pliosaurs went extinct). So far as can be deduced, there were no significant extinctions on land at a global level.
Survivors - The Cenomanian-Turonian would be the last time in Earth's history that a major ocean-anoxia event occurred across the world's oceans (Petrizzo, et al. 2022). Mosasaurs, a lineage of paddle-limbed lizards, would evolve to take over the role of the ocean's great predators from the pliosaurs and ichthyosaurs. On land, the drying of the climate facilitated the spread of mid-latitude open forest environments dominated by flowering trees of the Fagales clade (the oaks, birches, alders, etc) while closed-conifer araucaria & cypress forests reduced in size (Heimhofer, et al. 2018).
Impression of the K-Pg Bolide Hitting the Earth (Donald Davis, Public Domain)
End-Cretaceous Mass Extinction Event
When? - ~66.043 Million Years Ago
Cause - Since the pioneering research done by the Alvarez team in 1980, the sheer volume of studies on the world of the very latest Cretaceous Period have converged on one major consensus: a ~6.2 mile-long bolide (space rock) collided with the Earth and it was this that ultimately caused a mass extinction (Chiarenza, et al. 2020). It struck the Yucatán Peninsula with the power of over a billion nuclear bombs, landing in an area rich in carbonate and sulfate minerals (Schulte, et al. 2010). Immediate effects from the blast included enormous earthquakes and megatsunamis. It is argued that the rain of returning debris in the form of superheated glass may have triggered surface conditions comparable to an oven, and the land would have cooked and burned under a global firestorm (Robertson, et al. 2013). All this would have occurred on the first day of the impact. By having landed in carbonate & sulfate-rich terrain, particularly strong aerosols had also been ejected across the atmosphere to produce a blanket against solar radiation. This then shifted the atmosphere from fire to ice, and a prolonged impact winter would unfold over a period of years to decades (Brugger, et al. 2016). The release of aerosols also contributed to ocean acidification through acid rains. Though there is evidence of intensive and substantial volcanism on the Indian Subcontinent at the end of the Cretaceous - these being the Deccan Traps eruptions - its effects on extinctions appear to have been minimal, and in fact they may even have helped life survive in the wake of the devastation (Chiarenza, et al. 2020).
Victims - The species losses span the entire breadth of the tree of life. The most prominent extinctions were, of course, among the non-avian dinosaurs (including all but one lineage of birds), marine reptiles, and pterosaurs. There were also losses among modern reptile groups, with lizards, tuataras, and crocodylomorphs being hard hit. Mammals - typically thought of as hardy survivors - actually suffered significant extinctions too, with marsupials and multituberculates experiencing the biggest die-offs. There were broken connections between plants and insects, leading to a decline in numbers for both (Labandeira, et al. 2022). Several clades of oceanic sharks and rays, and bony fishes, went extinct. The great rudist bivalves and the reefs they formed died out, and there were large losses among the scleractinian corals too. Fellow marine invertebrates suffered both declines and extinctions, most notably the inoceramid clams (now extinct), the squid-like belemnites (now extinct), and the ammonites (extinct within about a million years of the event). As with most mass extinctions, planktonic forms suffered greatly, with coccoliths and forams experiencing another wave of extinctions.
Survivors - Freshwater animals, particularly turtles, frogs, and bony fishes, seem to have buffered against the devastation, with some forms growing exceptionally large fairly soon into the Paleogene Period. In the seas, many marine forms survived by either retreating to the depths or seeking shelter in refugia. On land, all major animal groups ultimately survived, including the dinosaurs: neornithine birds (the group to which our living forms belong) seem to have made it out against the other bird clades because they were ground-dwelling generalists. Mammals and other small tetrapods also survived by being generalists, as well as having burrowing or subsurface behaviors that allowed them to ride out the head & cold. Total recovery is estimated to have taken a few hundred thousand years as global temperatures climbed back to hothouse conditions, and the increased ash from the global wildfires appear to have fertilized the soil enough to spur a rapid growth in broadleaved angiosperms. The bolide impact gave birth to the first tropical rainforests (Carvalho, et al. 2021).
Eocene Marine Events
When? - ~41.5-37.71 Million Years Ago (Eocene Epoch)
Cause - Two little known extinction events, which appear to be linked to changes in ocean circulation (MacLeod, 2015). In the first at the Lutetian-Bartonian boundary, there is evidence of a brief period of global warming which increased runoff into the oceans, though there is as yet no evidence of increased CO2 outgassing (Intxauspe-Zubiaurre, et al. 2018). During the second at the Bartonian-Priabonian boundary, cooler waters from temperate zones flooded into warmer, tropical waters (MacLeod, 2015).
Victims - The first thermal maximum period appears to have wiped out a large diversity of gastropods, bivalves, and foraminifera, while the latter saw extinctions among foraminifera (including the last Nummulites), gastropods, bivalves, and echinoids (the urchin clade) (Less & Özcan, 2012). There are correlated extinctions on land during these times, particularly with the loss of various placental mammal groups (e.g. dinoceratans, hyopsodontids), and these may be tied to possible changes in sea levels (MacLeod, 2015).
Survivors - Beyond the losses of mollusks and plankton, most marine life appears to have made it through this period. Fossil records at European sites point to remarkable fish diversity in the following ages.
The "Grande Coupure"
When? - ~33.9-33.4 Million Years Ago (Eocene-Oligocene Epoch)
Cause - At the end of the Eocene Epoch, Antarctica had begun to acquire its permanent ice sheets following its separation from the other southern hemisphere continents and the beginnings of circumpolar ocean currents. This would have cascading effects down through the Cenozoic Era, as the Earth's average global climate would gradually shift towards cooler temperatures and more marked seasonality. Research supports a link between the increasingly rapid seasonal changes (including colder winters) and a high rate of extinctions (Ivany, et al. 2000). As sea-levels shrunk due to the expanding ice sheets, the Turgai Strait which had separated the European and greater Eurasian landmasses closed up, allowing different animals and plants to spread into new lands.
Victims - The name "Grande Coupure" means "Great Cut" and refers to a clear turnover in mammalian diversity in Europe, as their original faunas were replaced by greater-Eurasian migrants (Costa, et al. 2011). European artiodactyls or even-toed hoofed mammals (e.g. xiphodontids, amphimerycids), perissodactyls or odd-toed hoofed mammals (e.g. palaeotheres), early primates (e.g. adapids & omomyids), rodents, and lipotyphlans all suffered extinctions. There is evidence in North America of a significant turnover in smaller animals like reptiles and snails (Zanazzi, et al. 2007). In the oceans, there was a notable decline in the diversity of mollusks and other marine invertebrates (Ivany, et al. 2000), and several varieites of stem-whales (like Basilosaurus) went extinct likely as a result of poor catches.
Survivors - In Europe, the new mammals that tookover and diversified include rhinoceroses, anthracotheres & entelodonts (clades related to hippos), ancestral hedgehogs, and various rodent lineages (e.g. cricrtids, castorids), while several of the native European forms also survived relatively unscathred. In the oceans where was an increase in predatory shell-drilling snail species upon the surviving bivalves (Kelly & Hanson, et al. 1996). Both toothed and baleen whales evolved and diversified in astonishing variety.
Middle Miocene Disruption
When? - ~14 Million Years Ago
Cause - Throughout the Earth's history, Milankovitch cycles have shifted the axis and orbital eccentricity of the planet, and these shifts become noticeably pronounced when there are large areas of surface ice. It's widely believed that the most famous Ice Ages of the Quaternary Period were influenced by these cycles, but in earlier periods they had similar power (Halbourn, et al. 2005). During the preceding Neogene Period, such orbital changes shifted the circulation of ocean currents, which in-turn shifted heat transfer and spurred increased global cooling (Shevenell, et al. 2004). Further influence on ocean currents was the final closure of the Tethys, which once linked separate oceans (Hamon, et al. 2013).
Victims - Statistically, it has been argued that this was one of the largest extinction events of the Cenozoic Era (at least regarding regional extinctions) but so far concrete evidence has been lacking for many groups (MacLeod, 2015). The warm-living faunas of the northern hemisphere suffered die-offs, with losses among crocodylomorphs, turtles, and lizards (Böhme, 2003). Tundra ecosystems in Antarctica, some of the last major land communities on the continent, experienced their last breath (Lewis, et al. 2008). In the oceans, a number of foram genera went extinct, but there is little evidence for marine invertebrate extinctions.
Survivors - Those plants and animals that could migrated to more accomdating clines and adapted to the cooling of the climate, eventually giving rise in a few million years time to extensive grassland ecosystems and their herding and pack-hunting faunas.
Pliocene-Pleistocene Extinction
When? - ~3-2 Million Years Ago
Cause - As the Neogene passed into the Quaternary, and the dawn of the last Ice Age was approaching, there was a time of dynamic climatic and environmental changes. The Greenland Ice Sheet and the greater Arctic Polar Cap were forming, and the Antarctic glaciers had by then more-or-less formed. Much like in the Middle Miocene, there were shifts in ocean circulation and heat-exchange which affected the globe, and shallow coastal seas were diminished (Pimiento, et al. 2017). This was assisted by the closing of the Isthmus of Panama, which connected North and South America and further closed off ocean currents.
Victims - Marine invertebrates suffered tremendous losses, particularly in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as cooler conditions took over warm-adapted species. In the Caribbean Sea, coral reefs declined in spread and diversity after 2 million years ago (Budd, 2000). Recent work shows that large marine vertebrates experienced a dramatic extinction of species, with losses among whales, sharks, penguins, and sea turtles (Pimiento, et al. 2017). The connection of the western hemisphere facilitated a prolongued exchange of animals and plants between the two Americas, the Great American Biotic Interchange, which contributed to the eventual turnover (and decline) of native South American mammals by incoming North American species. In the newly-formed Afro-Eurasian landmass, there were also an increased extinction of proboscideans and other mammal groups (Cantalapiedra, et al. 2021).
Survivors - The shift to the Quaternary Ice Age promoted the evolution and adaptation of cold-adapted organisms, both on land and in the oceans. It's not until after this time that the great rorquals and other baleen whales evolved in response to the decline in larger marine predators (Slater, et al. 2017).
Late Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions
When? - Began roughly 80,000 Years Ago
Cause - Homo sapiens evolved across Africa by 300,000 Years Ago and there is evidence of periodic dispersals into Eurasia since that time, but it isn't until between 80 and 50,000 years ago that a wave of humans migrated from East Africa, into the Iranian Plateau, and out across the rest of the world. In contrast to other hominins like Neanderthals, early Homo sapiens lived in extensive social networks, could adapt remarkably fast to unique environments, bred fast, and relied on domestic dogs as hunting assistants. This made them very effective predators, and organisms which bred slow & few or were previously unaccustomed to a human presence (as was the case in regions like the Americas or Oceania) were the most vulnerable. Though it is true that there was a shift from glacial to interglacial conditions between the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs, so far as can be discerned from the patterns of extinction, it was human beings who ultimately wiped out the world's megafauna, the largest animals of a given ecosystem (Lemoine, et al. 2023).
Victims - Far from being considered a mass extinction, the decline consisted mainly of giant mammals, birds, and assorted non-avian reptiles. Wherever a firm human presence was established, within a few thousand years, giant marsupials, mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, glyptodonts, horses, camels, bovids, bears, big cats, flightless birds, giant tortoises, and meiolaniid turtles went extinct. Islands were also particularly hard-hit and a tenuious link with the extinction of the New Zealand moa and Madagascan hippos, giant lemurs, and elephant birds to these earlier human dispersals, even though they occurrred within the last 2,000 years.
Survivors - Though there is even evidence of significant declines among mammals which survived into the present day (Bergman, et al. 2023), ultimately the factors in their favor were many. Some wild mammals dispersed alongside humans and settled where now-extinct forms roamed, like the moose (Meiri, et al. 2020). Others had co-evolved with humans or other hominins in the first place: hence the lack of die-offs in Africa or South Asia (Turvey, et al. 2021). Subsequent environmental changes unfolded in a world depleted of large animals, given their extensive influence on ecosystem engineering, and habitats that survived were a shell of their former selves (Svenning, et al. 2024).
Earth System Trends of the last 300 Years (Bryanmackinnon, CC BY-SA 4.0) Larger Image
Late Holocene Mass Extinction
When? - At least 500 Years Ago, but arguably earlier
Cause - As human populations increased and the need/desire for resources like food, minerals, and territory increased, the global environment took on greater and greater stresses. While there is ample evidence of positive and negative ecological management across human history, the last 500 years of global capitalism and colonialism have had a proportionally-devastating effect on habitat destruction, defaunation, and extinction. Particularly strong drivers include (and have included) intensive agriculture, overhunting, overfishing, overharvesting, the wildlife trade, pollution & runoff, added input from CO2 & methane emissions, and widespread ignorance or apathy about any of these things (Bradshaw, et al. 2021). The conditions being created on the Earth as you read this have been compared to and understood in the context of past mass extinctions, especially in light of recent revelations: for example, it has been demonstrated that ocean anoxia, acidification, and the formation of "dead zones" is occurring in parts of the ocean today (Gobler & Baumann, 2016; Mancini, et al. 2024).
Victims - Though the extent of calculated losses has been contentious and disputed (MacLeod, 2015), recent surveys show without a doubt that a significant defaunation and extinction of lineages is occurring across all biological lineages and that we are in the beginning pains of a mass extinction event (Cowie, et al. 2025; Ceballos & Ehrlich, 2018). A 2023 analysis estimated that ~1.97 million species could become threatened with extinction due to various human activities (Hochkirch, et al. 2023), while the contributions from anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change could further accelerate extinctions with a excess of 1.5°C global average temperatures (Urban, 2024). In the oceans, in freshwater systems, and on terrestrial habitats, life is being impacted. Surveys estimate that 40.7% of amphibians, 21.1% of non-avian reptiles, 13.6% of birds, and 25.4% of mammals are threatened with extinction (Cox, et al. 2022). >40% of insects - usually outliers in past extinction events - are at risk (Sánchez-Bayo & Wyckhuys, 2019). 26% of freshwater fishes & 30% of freshwater crayfish, shrimp, and crabs are at risk (Sayer, et al. 2025). 12.7% of marine fishes are at risk (Loiseau, et al. 2024), with sharks, rays, and large bony fishes especially depleted. 44% of coral species are at risk (IUCN, 2024) and complex reef ecosystems are vulnerable to total collapse. Among mollusks, it is estimated that between 7.5-13% of described snails and clams have been wiped out since 1500 (Régnier, et al. 2017); land snails & freshwater bivalves have been especially vulnerable. Roughly 39% of vascular plants (angiosperms, gymnosperms, ferns, & lycopods) are at risk (Lughadha, et al. 2020). Overall, it has been estimated that ~30% of known species have either been killed off or threatened with extinction within the last 500 years (Isbell, et al. 2022).
Survivors - A 2023 study reported that "49% and 3% of species currently remain stable or are increasing, respectively" and that this survivability shows "a tendency to expand towards temperate climates" (Finn, et al. 2023). That said, the sheer scale of biological destruction and its multifacited human causes will almost certainly have uncalculated consequences and affect these numbers. We must recognize one key fact: this is the only extinction event in Earth's history whose definite cause (humanity) is also its solution. The very same power that has allowed humans to change the surface of the planet is the very same that can end the devastation and safeguard biodiversity (including our own wellbeing). We need only choose to do so.
Closing Thoughts
This has been a worthwhile exercise, and I have learned a lot in researching and preparing this summary of extinction events, and I have tried to be comprehensive in scope (however imperfect I might have been).
I have gathered a few key lessons in outlining the history of extinctions, and here's what I've taken to heart:
Plankton and marine invertebrates have been the backbone of understanding extinction events. In fact, their very nature as common, easily-preserved fossils is what allowed geologists and paleontologists to create the time scale of the Earth, whose major divisions have been marked by the loss or appearance of specific invertebrate fossils. They are particularly vulnerable to extinctions, and many major lineages have succumbed to death, thus altering the foundations of oceanic food webs.
Plate tectonics have been one of the major driving forces of extinction events. While the hypothesis of a "cyclicity of mass extinctions" due to cosmological phenomena has been heavily debated, there is a clear correlation between the movements of the continents and extinction events. Volcanic eruptions are usually the result of tectonic activities, and it is through them that significant ocean anoxia and climatic warming/cooling occur. As well, the closing or opening of isthmi due to continental drift have helped regulate the positions of oceanic currents. All these phenomena have been involved in the majority of the Earth's extinction events. Bolide impacts, for all their popularity as research subjects, have only truly been confirmed as harbingers of extinction for the End Cretaceous Event.
Life is resiliant, but not all-powerful. Though our fellow organisms have survived all the previously described events, it is clear that today's sample is the exception: >99% of all the species that have ever lived are now extinct. The threats to their wellbeing have been many and without warning, and the loss of even a few species or clades has upset whole ecosystems. This is all the more reason why we must do everything we can to preserve and cherish the life that still exists on the Earth. The Holocene Mass Extinction has been particularly severe and all-encompasing, and it is a fact that diversity enhances survivability in the long-term. The Great Dying took millions of years for life to fully recover, and we're basically playing out this extinction event on a significantly shorter timescale, with no clear guarantee of the outcome; we are truly living in unprecedented times. If we want to have a future worth living, we must embrace this understanding of past extinction events and rebuild our connections with life on Earth.
Special thanks to @albertonykus & @otussketching for productive conversations on the nature of extinction events.
Book Citations
Michael J. Benton. Extinctions (Thames & Hudson, 2023)
Peter Brannen. The Ends of the World (Ecco, HarperCollins, 2017)
Norman MacLeod. The Great Extinctions (Firefly Books, 2015)
Paper Citations
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Barbara Balestra, et al. 2025. Benthic foraminiferal Mg/Ca response across the Aptian-Albian Boundary Interval at DSDP Site 511 (Falkland Plateau) (Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology)
Michael Benton, et al. 2021. The Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution and the origins of modern biodiversity (New Phytologist)
Juraj Bergman, et al. 2023. Worldwide Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene population declines in extant megafauna are associated with Homo sapiens expansion rather than climate change (Nature Communications)
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Mónica R. Carvalho, et al. 2021. Extinction at the end-Cretaceous and the origin of modern Neotropical rainforests (Science)
Gerardo Ceballos & Paul R. Ehrlich, 2018. The misunderstood sixth mass extinction (Science)
Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, et al. 2020. Asteroid impact, not volcanism, caused the end-Cretaceous dinosaur extinction (PNAS)
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Yong Du, et al. 2022. A massive magmatic degassing event drove the Late Smithian Thermal Maximum and Smithian–Spathian boundary mass extinction (Global and Planetary Change)
Catherine Finn, et al. 2023. More losers than winners: investigating Anthropocene defaunation through the diversity of population trends (Biological Reviews)
Christopher J. Gobler & Hannes Baumann, 2016. Hypoxia and acidification in ocean ecosystems: coupled dynamics and effects on marine life (Biology Letters)
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L. Hamon, et al. 2013. The role of eastern Tethys seaway closure in the Middle Miocene Climatic Transition (ca. 14 Ma) (European Geosciences Union)
Ulrich Heimhofer, et al. 2018. Vegetation response to exceptional global warmth during Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (Nature Communications)
Axel Hochkirch, et al. 2023. A multi-taxon analysis of European Red Lists reveals major threats to biodiversity (PLOS One)
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IUCN Red List Press Release, 2024. Over 40% of coral species face extinction (IUCN)
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Patricia H. Kelley & Thor A. Hansen, 1996. Recovery of the naticid gastropod predator-prey system from the Cretaceous-Tertiary and Eocene-Oligocene extinctions (Geological Society, London)
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Conrad C. Labandeira, et al. 2002. Impact of the terminal Cretaceous event on plant–insect associations (PNAS)
Rhys Taylor Lemoine, et al. 2023. Megafauna extinctions in the late-Quaternary are linked to human range expansion, not climate change (Anthropocene)
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Adam R. Lewis, et al. 2008. Mid-Miocene cooling and the extinction of tundra in continental Antarctica (PNAS)
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Catherine A. Sayer, et al. 2025. One-quarter of freshwater fauna threatened with extinction (Nature)
Peter Schulte, et al. 2010. The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary (Science)
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Graham J. Slater, et al. 2017. Independent evolution of baleen whale gigantism linked to Plio-Pleistocene ocean dynamics (Proceedings of the Royal Society B)
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Mass extinctions are when a large sample of biological clades undergoes a geologically-brief period of die-off that is statistically higher than the background rate of extinction (Marshal, 2023). Most of the organisms that have ever lived died out through the regular trials of natural selection, but on occasion the Earth's conditions changed so rapidly that many different species could not adapt in time.
These extinction events were some of the driving forces that shaped the evolution of life, typically be "reshuffling the deck" or weeding out a few key taxa, thus paving the way for new life to flourish. So what are these mass extinctions and just how did they change the world?
In this post, I will be providing a brief account of our current understanding of each extinction event: when they occured, their causes, and the victims and survivors. As you'll come to discover, the pop-science view of "five big mass extinctions" is complicated by evidence suggesting that some singular events are best seen as two or three, while others have been neglected by mainstream coverage.
Great Oxidation Event
When? - ~2.4-2 Billion Years Ago (Paleoproterozoic Era)
Cause - When photosynthesizing bacteria evolved the Earth's atmosphere did not contain free oxygen, being mainly CO2 and nitrogen. The process of photosynthesis converts sunlight into sugars which takes in CO2 and expels oxygen. The abundance of prokaryotes engaged in this chemistry released oxygen in enormous quantities. While much of it initially was absorbed by dissolved iron on the seabed, the rest rose into the atmosphere. This increase in free oxygen changed the air content and triggered global cooling (perhaps spawning glacial periods).
Victims - It has been generally proposed that the newly oxygenated atmosphere had negative effects on the then-common anaerobic bacteria & archaea, who should have suffered a mass extinction due to oxygen poisoning. While direct evidence for this had been lacking for some time, recent geochemical work suggests "a rapid reduction in primary productivity of >80%" that "imply a collapse in primary productivity" (Hodgskiss, 2019).
Survivors - Aerobic prokaryotes would have flourished in the aftermath of the Oxidation Event, while anaerobic forms would have migrated and adapted into areas still free of oxygen. It has been argued that the evolution of eukaryotes was spurred by the changes, but so-far this is controversial (Fakhraee, 2013).
End-Ediacaran Extinction Event
When? - ~541 Million Years Ago
Cause - An event little-studied and sometimes doubted (MacLeod, 2015), recent work posits that Ediacaran communities were generally low-diversity and "quiet"-ecologically (Darroch, et al. 2015). The gradual evolution of new animal life (a.e. not an explosion as typically described) at the bridge of the Cambrian corresponds with ecosystem-engineering that simply pushed many of the Ediacaran species to extinction.
Victims - The mysterious "Ediacaran fauna": a collection of soft-bodied, basal-animals. Dipleurozoans (e.g. Dickinsonia), trilobozoans, and cephalozoans (e.g. Spriggina) went extinct.
Survivors - Petalonamids like Charnia, frond-shaped stem-eumetazoans (animals with tissues, nerves, and muscles) were the only classic Ediacaran forms to make it through. Genetic and fossil evidence shows that the ancestors of many living animal groups were around at the time: they likely contributed to the extinction in the first place. This event marks the transition towards the so-called "Cambrian Fauna" of marine invertebrate biodiversity that characterized the next 40 million years.
Archaeocyathids (Stanton F. Fink, CC BY 2.5)
End-Botomian Extinction Event
When? - ~513-509 Million Years Ago (Middle Cambrian Period)
Cause - Recent work points to roughly 4-pulses of the "Cambrian Explosion" (Benton, 2023). By 513 MYA, this had ceased, and marine invertebrate faunas were abundant in the world's oceans. Evidence from sulphur isotopes suggests that volcanic eruptions in present-day north Australia led to a rise in CO2 and anoxic conditions on the continental shelves (Hough, et al. 2006). Such shifts are prime conditions for disrupting and destroying reef ecosystems; the early Cambrian saw the rise of archaeocyathids, reef-building relatives of sponges, that supported marine communities.
Victims - The last of the petalonamids died out. Archaeocyathids and the reefs they built perished. There were losses among brachiopods (obolellates died out), trilobites (the spiny olenellids in particular), and it has been proposed that the halkieriids & Wiwaxia - potential stem-mollusks - were victims but there are some issues with stratigraphic-dating and there is tentative evidence they survived into the Ordovician.
Survivors - Paleontologists recognize a "Cambrian Dead Interval" following the Botomian in which marine biodiversity was low for a while (Brannen, 2017). The climate was fairly cool and geologists have found evidence of coastal ice within tropical zones that likely kept surviving invertebrates in check (Runkel, et al. 2010). For context, the Burgess Shale community is thought to have come into being following the extinction event.
Early Dresbachian & Franconian Extinction Events
When? - ~502 & 497 Million Years Ago (Late Cambrian Period)
Cause - A series of extinction pulses that are little known. Attention has been drawn to the Steptoean Positive Carbon Isotope Excursion or SPICE, a return to anoxic conditions due this time to coastal upwelling (Bond & Grasby, 2017).
Victims - Trilobites experienced particularly high losses, with the flat-bodied redlichiids dying out and the genera-records of North America and Australia lowering over time (Bond & Grasby, 2017).
Survivors - Marine invertebrate communities remained low in diversity compared to earlier times.
Cambrian-Ordovician Extinction Event
When? - ~485 Million Years Ago (Late Trempealeauan Age)
Cause - The culmination of punctuated Cambrian extinctions, with eruptions in southern Africa contributing to even-lower anoxic conditions in the oceans.
Victims - Among other invertebrate losses, trilobites were reduced in clade-diversity to such levels that they never recovered from their peak in the Cambrian.
Survivors - Despite the losses among trilobites, modelling suggests that a few clades may have entered symbiotic relationships with sulphur-bacteria, ensuring their survival in hard times (John & Walker, 2016). Brachiopods radiated into entirely new groups following the extinction event, while conodonts (lamprey-like early vertebrates) truly began to flourish afterwards. Evidence from Morocco and the United Kingdom show that some of the Cambrian marine fauna survived into the Ordovician (Botting, et al. 2023).
Anatomy of a Bryozoa zooid (SLP456, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Late Ordovician Extinction Events
When? - ~445-444 Million Years Ago (Mid & Late Ashgill Epochs)
Causes - Following the various Cambrian extinctions, marine invertebrate faunas underwent a radical shift called the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event: the new "Paleozoic Fauna" constituted mainly of brachiopods, bryozoa, echinoderms, graptolites, and cephalopods and remained in place for roughly 230 million years. Two pulses of extinction are recognized at the end of the period, having commonly been attributed to the rise in the Gondwanan Ice Sheet in the southern hemisphere (a sort of proto-Antarctica), which caused a drop in coastal sea levels while simultaneously chilling the tropical oceans. Additional factors have been proposed, including a convergence in volcanic activity that reduced oxygen-levels in the seas and further cooled the climate. Recovery of black shales in North Africa and Arabia indicate that this rapid icehouse cooling was just as rapidly followed by severe greenhouse warming (Brannen, 2017). This is not consensus, however, and other proposals have been work-shopped including volcanic global warming (with no glaciation involved) and extraterrestrial events (Bond & Grasby, 2017, Benton 2023).
Victims - The first wave of extinctions primarily hit free-swimming and planktonic forms, and "multi-branched" graptolites were hit very hard. The second wave of extinctions was less severe, but overall both periods saw significant loses in sessile (fixed to the ocean floor) organisms (including crinoids, "inarticulate" brachiopods, and bryozoa). The iconic giant nautiloid cephalopods like Endoceras died out.
Survivors - Evidence points to a lessening in regional marine faunal diversity but a broadening of geographic ranges for particular organisms. Trilobites, brachiopods, and bryozoa did survive, but now they were a shell of their former variety. Perhaps the most remarkable post-catastrophe boost was in the early vertebrates: jawless fishes had evolved in the Cambrian, but following the Ordovician they radiated, developed paired fins, and gave rise to jawed fishes or gnathostomes.
Silurian Extinctions
When? - Between 432 and 420 Million Years Ago
Cause - A series of three little-known pulses of extinction during the Middle and Late Silurian Periods. The first (the Ireviken Event) seems to correspond to deep-ocean anoxia, while the second and final (the Mulde & Lau events) follow a drop in sea levels
Victims - In the strata in which these extinction events occurred, there were significant losses among trilobites, graptolites, and conodonts. There is evidence to suggest a fall in plantkonic-productivity (Bond & Grasby, 2017)
Survivors - Rugose and tabulate reef-builders remained unaffected
Cause - Five minor pulses of regional extinctions throughout the Early and Middle Devonian Periods, attributed to sea level rises and oceanic anoxia
Victims - Goniatites and agoniatitids, relatives of ammonites, suffered losses, as did trilobites, conodonts, brachiopods, bryozoa, and a little-known group of lophophorates called tentaculitids. An additional group of reef-builders - the stromatoporoid sponges - also experienced declines along with certain rugose and tabulate coral taxa
Survivors - While there were losses among marine invertebrate clades, no major groups died off altogether.
Devonian Reef, showcasing rugose & tabulate corals (James St. John, CC BY 2.0)
Late Devonian Extinctions
When? - Between 372.2-358.9 Million Years Ago
Cause - Long recognized as a singular extinction event (and one of the "Big Five", the Late Devonian is better understood to have encapsulated perhaps two pulses of extinction. The first was largest of the two, the Kellwasser Event, followed millions of years later by the Hangenerg Event which closed out the period. There have been issues with poorly-dated strata, and this has led to conflicting data suggesting times of global cooling and warming (Brannen, 2017). A leading contender for the two pulses had been the rise and spread of terrestrial plants: the evolution of root-systems lead to widespread weathering of rocks and soil run-off, which triggered a particularly deadly combination of ocean anoxia and poisonous planktonic blooms akin to red-tides (Smart, et al. 2023). There is also evidence to suggest volcanic activity played a role in at least the Kellwasser Event (Benton, 2023).
Victims - This was the peak for reef-building organisms during the Devonian, and these events led to such a great loss in rugose & tabulate corals, with the stromatoporoids going extinct, that these ecosystems never recovered. Overall marine life suffered tremendous extinctions across invertebrate and vertebrates groups. Trilobite diversity was cleaved once again, e.g. lichids, corynexochids, harpetids, odontopleuridans, and phacopids. Cystoid echinoderms went extinct. Pentamerid brachiopods went extinct. Most of the jawless fishes and all of the jawed and armored "placoderms" went extinct (think of Dunkleosteus & Bothriolepis).
Survivors - Trilobites only barely made it through the extinction event, with only the proetid clade surviving. Bivalve and gastropod mollusks - originally minor elements of the marine fauna - began to experience a rise and spread of variety. Fish diversity, though severely depleted, did eventually recover under new adaptive radiations, particularly among cartilaginous and lobe-finned groups. There is little evidence to suggest that land floras and faunas were effected by the changes.
Serpukhovian Extinction
When? - Between 330 and 325 Million Years Ago
Cause - A significant mass extinction at the end of the Mississippian or Early Carboniferous Period. Recent isotopic studies point to (you guessed it) deepwater anoxia spreading to shallow coastal waters (Hu, 2022).
Victims - The Mississippian seas were originally home to massive groves of crinoid forests supplemented by surviving rugose corals, but following the Serpukhovian Event these environments experienced a major turnover. Major brachiopod groups suffered losses, as did conodonts.
Survivors - Marine invertebrate faunas remained low throughout the rest of the Carboniferous Period.
Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse
When? - ~305 Million Years Ago
Cause - The famous coal forests full of giant arthropods and reptilian-esque stem-amphibians were only a Pennsylvanian or Later Carboniferous phenomena. The fossil record points to a widespread span of these forests across present-day Europe and North America, which at the time strode the equator (Benton, 2023). On the paleo-continent of Gondwana in the southern hemisphere, glaciers spread and facilitated a massive drop in global sea levels. The coal forests were situatied in low-lying wetlands, and so the great majority of these environments collapsed as the world cooled and dried.
Victims - Coal forests were primarily formed of lycopods, which suffered losses and declines. Within the forests, early tetrapods experienced a drop in species richness (Dunne, et al. 2018).
Survivors - There is evidence of a transition in flora between the coal forest lycopods and tree ferns, which in turn led to a shift in the development of "fixed-channel" floodplains and river systems (Davies & Gibling, 2011). Despite the declines, coal forests did survive in small pockets, with ecological members like Lepidodendron and the giant griffinflies making it to the end of the Permian Period.
Olson's Extinction
When? - 273 Million Years Ago
Cause - Recent research supports a small extinction event occuring at the end of the Early Permian Period (Brocklehurst, 2020). The causes are still being studied, although a rise in global temperatures has been implicated based on the taxa that were effected, whom primarily inhabited wetter environments.
Victims - Among the synapsid "protomammals", most of the early-branching forms went extinct, including edaphosaurids, ophiacodonts, and sphenacodontids (e.g. Dimetrodon). Reptiliomorphs and temnospondyls also experiences losses, as did the fern-dominated floras they relied upon.
Survivors - Therapsids, derived synapsids with more mammalian-traits survived and radiated into several new clades. Seed-bearing plants, including ancestral conifers and ginkgoes, survived and later flourished.
Carnivorous gorgonopsian preying on herbivorous pareiasaurs (Dmitry Bogdanov, CC BY 3.0)
The Great Dying or End Permian Extinctions
When? - Between 259 and 251 Million Years Ago
Causes - Statistically this was the largest mass extinction event in Earth's history, but recent work points to it unfolding in two massive pulses: the Capitanian Event and the Changhsingian Event (Bond & Grasby, 2017; Benton, 2023). An increase in research over the last decade has shed new light on the multifaceted causes of this extinction event. Both events were encapsulated by a spike in volcanic emissions, with the Capitanian perhaps centered on the Emeishan Traps eruptions of South China and the Changhsingian centered on the Siberian Traps eruptions of Russia. Such activity lead to spikes in ocean anoxia and acidification, and the Changhsingian in particular had additional baggage. The Siberian Traps emissions were enormous, on the order of 1.8 million cubic miles of lava flows which are preserved today as flood basaltic deposits 1,300-9,840 feet thick (MacLeod, 2015). Such devastating volcanic activity over several hundred million years pushed C02 levels in the atmosphere and blotted out the sun, triggering a runaway greenhouse effect. This global warming was assisted by the melting of deep ocean methane and underground salts, and the release of sulfates from the volcanoes (which chipped away at the ozone layer). The oceans became choked with acid and were heated to 93-104°F (Benton, 2023), and the land was boiling and suffocating under an sky filled with 2,500 ppm of CO2 (Wu, et al. 2021). The only organisms to really flourish were sulphur-eating bacteria.
Victims - Life across all clades experienced declines and total extinctions, hence the designation of "The Great Dying". In the seas, all the trilobites, rugose & tabulate corals, eurypterids ("water scorpions"), goniatites, and strophomenid & orthid brachiopods went extinct. Fusulinid foraminifera (forams are shelled amoeba-like microbes) went extinct. Receptaculitid marine algae went extinct, and there were sharp losses among land plants, including the Glossopteris forests. This is the only major extinction event to affect insects, and five clades died out including the paleodictyopterids and giant griffinflies (meganisopterans). Many groups of therapid protomammals went extinct, including gorgonopsians, dinocephalians, and biarmosuchians. The parareptiles - early diverging forms with the anapsid-skull condition - also mostly perished. Lepospondyls, amphibian-like stem reptiles, went extinct, while only some temnospondyl groups perished (e.g. the gharial-like archegosaurids).
Survivors - It is estimated that life took several million years to recover, and the earliest Mesozoic Era was for the most part an empty place for some time. Surviving marine invertebrates were all smaller than their ancestors, and many aquatic vertebrates may have survived the devastation by retreating to the deeper ocean depths. Overall, therapsids, reptiles, and temnospondyls survived and would jockey for available land and freshwater niches, the outcome of which would be determined by further catastrophies.
This survey will conclude with the Mesozoic and Cenozoic mass extinctions in the next post...
Book Citations
Michael J. Benton. Extinctions (Thames & Hudson, 2023)
Peter Brannen. The Ends of the World (Ecco, HarperCollins, 2017)
Norman MacLeod. The Great Extinctions (Firefly Books, 2015)
Paper Citations
David P. G. Bond & Stephen E. Grasby, 2017. On the causes of mass extinctions (Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology)
Joseph P. Botting, et al. 2023. A Middle Ordovician Burgess Shale-type fauna from Castle Bank, Wales (UK) (Nature Ecology and Evolution)
Neil Brocklehurst, 2020. Olson's Gap or Olson's Extinction? A Bayesian tip-dating approach to resolving stratigraphic uncertainty (PNAS)
Simon A. F. Darroch, et al. 2015. Biotic replacement and mass extinction of the Ediacaran biota (PNAS)
Neil S. Davies & Martin R. Gibling, 2011. Evolution of fixed-channel alluvial plains in response to Carboniferous vegetation (Nature Geoscience)
Emma M. Dunne, et al. 2018. Diversity change during the rise of tetrapods and the impact of the ‘Carboniferous rainforest collapse’ (PNAS)
Mojtaba Fakhraee, et al. 2023. Earth's surface oxygenation and the rise of eukaryotic life: Relationships to the Lomagundi positive carbon isotope excursion revisited (Earth-Science Reviews)
Ashley P. Gumsley, 2017. Timing and tempo of the Great Oxidation Event (PNAS)
Michelle Hough, et al. 2006. A major sulphur isotope event at c. 510 Ma: A possible anoxia-extinction-volcanism connection during the Early-Middle Cambrian transition? (Terra Nova)
Malcolm S. W. Hodgskiss, et al. 2019. A productivity collapse to end Earth's Great Oxidation (PNAS)
Dongping Hu, et al. 2022. Multiple S-isotope constraints on environmental changes during the Serpukhovian mass extinction (Earth and Planetary Science Letters)
Douglas L. John & Sally E. Walker, 2016. Testing symbiotic morphology in trilobites under dysoxic and oxic conditions from Cambrian to Early Ordovician Lagerstätten (Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology)
Charles R. Marshall, 2023. Forty years later: The status of the "Big Five" mass extinctions (Cambridge Prisms: Extinction)
Anthony Runkel, et al. 2010. Tropical shoreline ice in the late Cambrian: Implications for Earth’s climate between the Cambrian Explosion and the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GSA Today)
Matthew S. Smart, et al. 2023. The expansion of land plants during the Late Devonian contributed to the marine mass extinction (Nature Communications Earth & Environment)
Yuyang Wu, et al. 2021. Six-fold increase of atmospheric pCO2 during the Permian–Triassic mass extinction (Nature Communications)
Physical World Map with tectonic boundaries (Eric Gaba, CC BY-SA 3.0) - Larger Image
I'm sure many of you would probably answer the question "what is a continent?" quite simply: it's a large landmass surrounded by water. And the question of "how many of them?": well it's seven!
Right?
It's easy to think that there is some common sense when it comes to defining a continent and their number, but it turns out that this is a matter that's fairly multifaceted. I've been curious about this myself many times before and it's something I've discussed with friends, and they've brought a number of perspectives to the table. So for this post, I'd like to break down the definition of continent and the number of proposed continents and see whether we can make sense of them in a way that can be mutually-agreed. And if we can't agree, why not?
First of all, who came up with the concept of continents? As Josephine Quinn explained in her 2024 book How the World Made the West, "Ionian Greek scholars invented the continents". The Ancient Greeks of the 6th Century BC split their world into Europe and Asia based upon the liquid-divisions of the Mediterranean Sea through the west coast of Anatolia and on to the Black Sea. The question of Africa was conflicting for a time, as some scholars recognized the achievements of the Phoenicians under Necho II of Egypt in circumnavigating Africa, while others subsumed Africa into Asia. Whatever their dimensions, to the Greeks these landmasses had political and cultural connotations from the very beginning: as the wars with Persia dawned, they believed that the different continents produced different temperaments and conditions, resulting in conflicting views about the nature of "Europeans" and "Asians" (Quinn 2024).
Of course, as the centuries rolled by and people began to make longer journeys overseas, they became more familiar with their homelands. And with the European discoveries of "New Worlds", of course, played a roll in shaping opinions. However, as late as the 18th Century, geographers were still in discourse about the nature of continents: some questioned the traditional ideas of antiquity in subdividing the "Old World" into distinct landmasses, and others preferred a looser definition that included sizable islands. In any case, many geographers and nonspecialists in the 21st Century still refer to "Europe", "Asia", and "Africa", so the shadows of the Ionians have remained over us to this day.
In their landmark 1997 book The Myth of Continents, Martin W. Lewis & Karen E. Wigen argued comprehensively that this long history of continental discourse simply reflects cultural conventions. Whatever scientific arguments the ancients had about the nature and number of continents was never really scientific to begin with, riddled as they were in ethnocentric bias and the western need to label and categorize.
That said, is there a way to define and delineate continents from a scientific perspective that focuses solely on geology and not culture?
When looking upon the planet Earth, geologists recognize that there is a distinction between land and sea (and I'm not talking about the dividing-line being the water): the key is in the rocks of the crust.
Geologic age of oceanic crust (FCrameri, CC BY-SA 4.0) - Larger Image
The ocean floor consists mainly of basaltic and gabbroic rocks. These igneous rocks form a series of layers going down about 4-6 miles (7-10 kilometers) deep and are composed of dark-colored mafic minerals like iron and magnesium. As a rule, basaltic rocks form the upper layers while gabbroic rocks form the lower layers that neighbor the top of the mantle.
The lands of the continents consist mainly of a foundation of granitic rocks: also igneous and composed of light-colored felsic minerals like aluminum and silicon. Due to the rock cycle, many areas of the continental crust have been frequently recycled and changed and so consist of sedimentary or metamorphic rocks, and can vary in height from 12 miles (20 km) to 44 miles (km) in thickness. As well, sea-level changes can expose or submerge this continental crust, and the true scale of these granite-pedestals can be seen in the continental shelves of the oceans today.
So this could be one piece of criteria to work with: a continent consists of a distinct granitic crust base.
But we must remember that the Earth's crust is not one uniform layer. Since the formation of Alfred Wegener's hypothesis of continental drift and the subsequent modern scientific consensus of plate tectonics by the late 1960s, geologists have recognized that the lithosphere is cracked like an egg into constantly moving plates. Tectonic plates essentially float above the mantle due to being comprised of lighter minerals. They move through a combination of convection currents in the mantle, gravitational forces, and the rising of magma at mid-ocean ridges, which causes these plates to divide, collide, and shape the Earth's crust.
The map shown above is a generally accepted representation of the Earth's tectonic plates. As you look, you can make out certain plates that correspond to conventionally-recognized continents, but as you continue looking you also find that things aren't straightforward. Europe is not considered a distinct plate but rather belongs to a larger Eurasian plate. Yet, this Eurasian plate doesn't correspond to how people would subsume Europe & Asia: there are separate Arabian, Indian, and Philippine plates, and part of Siberia is included in the North American Plate! As well, there are many tectonic plates that are composed mainly of the oceanic basaltic crust and not the continental granitic crust we're looking for.
That's not even the half of it. For the last decade or so there has been a growing body of research into plate tectonics, and many researchers have argued strongly for a rethink of how we look at the Earth's crust. One 2022 paper by Derrick Hasterok and colleagues proposed that there are 16 major plates and 54 "microplates", while another 2023 paper by Janpieter van Dijk culminated in a division of the Earth into 1,180 plates (see below).
Janpieter van Dijk's global tectonic map (CC BY-SA 4.0)
With such a more refined understanding of tectonic forces comes newer and newer interpretations of how geologists should look at the world. Much news was made about Zealandia in 2017, when Nick Mortimer and colleagues formerly designated an area of undersea continental crust - comparable in size to South Asia - as "Earth's hidden continent". And more recently, Luke Longley and colleagues argued that the geologic boundary separating the North American and Eurasian plates along Iceland have not fully separated yet (Longley, et al. 2024). This Rifted Oceanic Magmatic Plateau would essentially mean that North America and Eurasia still consist of a single continent connected along the northern Atlantic.
So it seems that one possible second criteria that a continent must be separated by the divergent or convergent boundaries which surround tectonic plates - as some geologists have proposed in the past - is far less stable.
The Mortimer, et al. 2017 paper is fascinating to me in that they also set about the task to try to understand continents scientifically and give a concise definition. After reviewing past criteria, the team agreed with the designations that continents should have a base of granitic felsic crust. They argue that the elevation of the land should play a key role, and this makes sense given that continental crust is substantially thicker than oceanic crust. And they push for a size minimum of >386,102 square miles (one million square kilometers). Tectonic divisions do not appear to play a big role in their schema, as Zealandia is not on a separate plate but borders the Australian and Pacific plates.
As hinted above, there are smaller subdivisions of the Earth's crust, including microcontinents which have broken away from larger landmasses (think Madagascar), but these I suppose can be considered as distinct from continents in the way that plutoids and other dwarf planets are different from true planets.
All this said, there is one dimension that could very well throw a wrench into this whole discussion: deep time.
Continents have a history going back at least 4.4 billion years (Hazen 2012), when evidence from zircon crystals hints that mineral evolution had produced the first granitic crust. Interestingly, one hypothesis for the origin of continents is that as the early basalt crust cooled in the newborn oceans, it pressed the lower basaltic layers against the upper mantle, which melted and changed the mineral composition into granite. These rocks, being lighter in composition, floated and pushed up to the surface, eventually forming small islands of land which eventually collided into cratons.
Cratons are considered the grand progenitors of the continents and are the oldest surviving geologic structures on Earth, calculated in billions of years. They can be considerably large and much of the remaining continental land area of the Earth essentially merged around them, slowly forming the landmasses we recognize today.
The North American Craton or Laurentia (U.S. Geological Survey, Public Domain)
Because of plate tectonics, our perception of stable continents shatters as we wind back the clock. Land bridges connect landmasses. Supercontinents form and break apart. Microcontinents abound and then collide into continents, becoming subsumed. It's only for the past 100 million years or so that the outlines of the modern continents can become discernible, beyond that, boundaries are blurred. One wonders how humans would've divided the planet's continents had we first emerged in, say, the Ordovician Period of 460 million years ago?
With this in mind, we run into a similar problem in biology: how to define species. When Linnaeus devised his System of Nature in the 18th Century, he had only living animals and plants to rely on when he coined the species-level in taxonomy. Since that time, every living thing has been given a binomial name. Humans are Homo sapiens, gray wolves are Canis lupus, etc, etc. These were essentially fixed categories, as the early naturalists of the time were mainly creationists. But once scientists understood evolution, deciphered its mechanisms, and recognized the volumes of history in deep time, suddenly species were no longer fixed but constantly changing entities. Wind back the clock and Homo sapiens eventually submerges into Homo erectus or some related form; go back even further and there are no longer hundreds of primates or rodents or whales but earlier placental mammals that belonged to their own unknown species.
This revolutionary shift in thinking has transformed how biologists classify species. They no longer rely on a simple system of comparing morphology but could use any of 16-32 different definitions, and they can now refer back to the fossil record or compare genomic sequences for clues about how living forms changed over time. Animals and plants that we once defined as concrete taxa have been split into multiple species and, conversely, many have been lumped into a single species.
Maybe we should be looking at continents in this way? Instead of creating a list of criteria and comparing the different living landmasses together, we should be thinking temporally, and considering multiple definitions for continent. The big side-effect of this would be that "continent" is a fluid, ever-changing category much like species. No one would have a single answer, because deep time renders these divisions as near-meaningless in the grand scheme of things. That's not to say that plate boundaries or cratons or granitic vs. basaltic crusts don't matter or can't tell us anything, it's just that this is another way the natural world rejects attempts at being subdued by rigid classification.
What is a continent? How many continents are there? Maybe these are the wrong questions to ask and the wrong ways to think, and it would be best to shake off the last few shackles those Ionian Greeks left us over 2,500 years ago.
What do you think?
Book Citations
Philip Eales, et al - The Science of the Earth (DK, 2022)
Robert M. Hazen - The Story of Earth (Penguin Books, 2012)
Josephine Quinn - How the World Made the West (Random House, 2024)
Martin W. Lewis & Karen E. Wigen - The Myth of Continents (University of California Press, 1997)
Paper Citations
Janpieter van Dijk, 2023. The new global tectonic map - Analyses and implications (Terra Nova)
Derrick Hasterok, et al. 2022. New Maps of Global Geologic Provinces and Tectonic Plates (Earth-Science Reviews)
Luke Longley, et al. 2024. The David Strait proto-microcontinent: The role of plate tectonic reorganization in continental cleaving (Gondwana Research)
Nick Mortimer, et al. 2017. Zealandia: Earth's Hidden Continent (GSA Today)
One of the most charismatic of Australia's placental mammals is the dingo, and their presence on the continent has always retained an air of mystery in the scientific community. The earliest European colonists noted the relationship between these dogs and First Nations peoples, where it was recognized as a "domestic animal" (Tench, 1789).
Subsequent ethnographic and field records show a more complicated picture. Dingoes occurred in both wild and human-centered conditions, and could freely move between these two states, sometimes leaving to roam the countryside while their human companions were away. People treated dingoes as lapdogs and cuddle-buddies, relied on them to ward off enemies on the physical and spiritual planes, and valued them as companions during hunting and gathering work; as well traditional Aboriginal knowledge includes multiple references to dingoes (Shipman, 2021).
That said, when it comes to the question of origins - how the dingo got to Australia - more questions have been raised than answers.
To start with, let's look at the zooarchaeological record. The oldest remains of a dingo come from Madura Cave on the Nullarbor Plain in southwestern Australia, which have recently been re-dated to between 3,348-3,081 years ago (Balme, et al. 2018).
Human beings have been on the continent for far longer than this, with conflicting results from archaeology and ancient DNA studies hinting at potentially multiple expansions between 65,000 and ~40,000 years ago (Sümer, et al. 2024; Clarkson, etal. 2017). There is no evidence to suggest that the ancestors of First Nations Australians brought dogs with them to the continent, and the sheer lack of dingo remains between this period and the site at Madura Cave would imply then that these animals arrived at a far later date.
Turning now to genetics, evolutionary biologists have been able to shed far more light onto this matter.
Put it simply, most zoologists agree that the dingo belongs to the same species as the domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris. The ancestors of our furry friends belong to a now-extinct population of gray wolves that seem to have inhabited central Eurasia and was domesticated by Ancient North Eurasians by 23,000 years ago (Perri, et al. 2021, Bergström, et al. 2020).
A paper by Matt A. Field and colleagues in 2022 demonstrated that most modern domestic dogs contain an increased number of copies of a gene called AMY2B, which creates copious amounts of the enzyme amylase in the pancreas to aid in the digestion of starches. It seems clear in this that the transition to agriculture across the world in the starting millennia of the Holocene Epoch was followed closely by domestic dogs. However, the dingo was found to lack this genetic change, indicating that its lineage branched off before the radiation of ancestral breeds by 11,000 years ago (Bergström, et al. 2020).
New Guinea Singing Dog (Patti McNeal, CC BY 2.0)
The closest living relative of the dingo is the New Guinea singing-dog which, like its Australian relative, exists along a spectrum of wild and domestic populations. These animals are near identical in appearance, and the most recent studies have revealed that their relationship is far more complex than being sister species: it appears that the dingo may be a subgroup of the New Guinea varieties, more closely related to the domestic forms than the wild ones (Surbakti, et al. 2020). These and similar findings also show evidence of admixture between New Guinea dogs and the separate later-diverging lineage of Oceanian dogs which accompanied the Austronesian-speaking Lapita peoples that populated Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. This is reflected in one paper which found that the New Guinea singing dog samples derived 58% of their genome from ancient East Eurasian breeds (Bergström, et al. 2020). In contrast, it appears that dingoes have never interbred with other domestic dogs during their tenure in Australia as has long been believed (Weeks, et al. 2024).
So, it is clear that a source of answers to the origin of dingoes lay with their New Guinea cousins. At some point, a population was separated and settled in Australia without prior admixture from other dog lineages. When did this happen?
One comprehensive genetic study has suggested that the introduction of the dingo occurred further back in time than the earliest archaeological sites would suggest. Between 8,300 and 7,800 years ago - and at least on two occasions according to one proposed hypothesis - dingoes diverged from the New Guinea dogs and found their way onto Australia (Cairns & Wilton. 2016). Subsequent work on historic dingo remains adds support to this model, showing a gradient in dingo diversity that had already been established by 2,000 years ago (Souilmi, et al. 2024, Koungoulos, et al. 2024).
This creates somewhat of a disconnect between the genetic data and the archaeology, as no older dingo remains have been found beyond 3,300 years ago. In her 2021 book Our Oldest Companions, Pat Shipman drew two possible conclusions from this research: if these findings were valid, then dingoes simply did not interact with people when they first reached the continent until thousands of years later, or if these findings were not valid, it's because the proposed dates are over-estimates of mutation rates, which could have varied in their speed and so give the impression of phylogenetic antiquity.
It must also be considered that this early split from New Guinea dogs does not necessarily mean that introduction to Australia happened immediately afterward. For all we know, these new populations remained on the island for thousands of years before they were properly introduced. Shipman recounted the remarkable speeds at which dogs spread into new regions when introduced by people in historic times, and it's likely that it only took a few hundred years for dingoes to arrive and spread across the continent before 3,300 YA (Shipman, 2021).
These questions all tie into perhaps the biggest mystery in dingo origins: who brought them to Australia?
One immediate candidate would be the Austronesian-speaking peoples, who have a fairly clear archaeological record of moving through Southeast Asia and into New Guinea and onto the outer western Pacific islands. It would be a matter of picking up the ancestral dingoes and landing them on Australian shores. In his landmark 1994 book The Future Eaters, Tim Flannery felt it "personally... quite likely" that the Lapita people would have become rather familiar with northeast Australia, citing evidence as disparate as Maori oral traditions and the genetics of parasitic lice. He even credits them with introducing the dingo. There is some very recent evidence further adding support to an idea of contact and familiarity: comparisons of pottery shards on offshore Jiigurru island on the Great Barrier Reef point to contact between Lapita people and First Nations Australians around 2,950 and 1,815 years ago (Ulm, et al. 2024).
Another proposed candidate are the Toaleans of south Sulawesi. Evidence of their society ranges far beyond the Austronesians, having lived on the island for around 9,000 years. They share genetic ancestry with the Indigenous Peoples of Australia, New Guinea, and greater island Melanesia. The Toaleans were also sea-fairing people, and evidence of similar tool technologies between them and Borneo point to extensive marine trade networks (Fillios & Taçon, 2016).
At the moment, the issues with these and other candidates are a lack of evidence and an inconsistency with dates. We must recall there is a minimum date of 3,300 YA for the presence of dingoes in Australia, plus a few hundred years perhaps. While the Lapita were certainly present in and around New Guinea by that point, there is a lack of evidence to show that their presence near Australia extended beyond influencing coastal pottery use by the First Nations in the Great Barrier Reef. And besides, while they had domestic dogs, these belonged to a different lineage than the dingo (which shows no evidence of admixture with other dogs). Fillios & Taçon, 2016 argued strongly for the Toaleans as the right candidate, as they were a foraging society and so would have conceivably owned dogs that lacked the AMY2B gene copies seen in agricultural breeds. To date, however, there has been no evidence they had domestic dogs or that they reached Australia.
The last remaining evidence we can look at are First Nations oral traditions and history. As Pat Shipman recounts: "Traditional knowledge, expressed in dances (corroborees) and myths, ... asserts that dingoes were transported to Australia — accidentally or purposefully — by coastal boat-using peoples..." (Shipman, 2021).
Indigenous Australians retained memories of their first encounter with dingoes as animals with some familiarity to humans. Shipman has argued that the fluidity of these dogs between "wild" and "domestic" states is evidence that from the beginning the dingo and its New Guinea ancestors were behaviorally unique from all other dog breeds by having lived in a sort of intermediate-state: they were not as wild as gray wolves, nor were they as tamed and reared as hounds and terriers. That they seemed to stick around with people anyway and benefit reminds me somewhat of domestic cats, who have never been as fully-domesticated as most of our other pets and livestock.
Clearly, we know more about the origins of dingoes than we did a few decades ago, but there are still missing puzzle pieces. A currently undocumented people from Southeast Asia or the Western Pacific introduced dingoes (perhaps more than once) onto the Australian continent prior to 3,300 years ago, descended from dogs in New Guinea many thousands of years earlier (who, themselves, are descended from an ancient pre-agricultural lineage of dogs).
Given the recent advances in ancient DNA research and an increasing sample size of Southeast Asian sites prior to the spread of farming Austronesian-speaking peoples, I have little doubt that these gaps will be filled in the coming years. Pre-colonial Australia was clearly not as isolated from the rest of humanity as is typically portrayed in pop-history texts, even ignoring dingoes, but by finding out more about the curious origin of these sandy-colored companions and wanderers, we will continue to break that stereotype and further align Australia to the rest of the ancient world.
Book Citations:
Tim Flannery, The Future Eaters (Grove Press, 1994)
Pat Shipman, Our Oldest Companions (Harvard University Press, 2021)
Watkin Tench, A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay (London, 1789)
Paper Citations:
Jane Balme, et al. 2018, New dates on dingo bones from Madura Cave provide oldest firm evidence for arrival of the species in Australia (Nature Scientific Reports)
Anders Bergström, et al. 2022, Grey wolf genomic history reveals duel ancestry of dogs (Nature)
Anders Bergström, et al. 2020, Origin and genetic legacy of prehistoric dogs (Science)
Chris Clarkson, et al. 2017, Human occupation of northern Australia by 65,000 years ago (Nature)
Matt A. Field, et al. 2022, The Australian dingo is an early offshoot of modern breed dogs (Science Advances)
Loukas G. Koungoulos, et al. 2024, Phenotypic diversity in early Australian dingoes revealed by traditional and 3D genomic morphometric analysis (Nature Scientific Reports)
Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, et al. 2016, A genomic history of Aboriginal Australia (Nature)
Angela R. Perri, et al. 2021, Dog domestication and the duel dispersal of people and dogs in the Americas (PNAS)
Yassine Souilmi, et al. 2024, Ancient genomes reveal over two thousand years of dingo population structure (PNAS)
Arev P. Sümer, et al. 2024, Earliest modern human genomes constrain timing of Neanderthal admixture (Nature)
Suriani Surbakti, et al. 2020, New Guinea highland wild dogs are the original New Guinea singing dogs (PNAS)
Melanie A. Fillios & Paul S.C. Taçon. 2016, Who let the dogs in? A review of the recent genetic evidence for the introduction of the dingo to Australia and implications for the movement of people (Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports)
Sean Ulm, et al. 2024, Early Aboriginal pottery production and offshore island occupation on Jiijurru (Lizard Island group), Great Barrier Reef, Australia (Quaternary Science Reviews)
Andrew R. Weeks, et al. 2024, Genetic structure and common ancestry expose the dingo-dog hybrid myth (Evolution Letters)
Kylie M. Cairns & Alan N. Wilton, 2016, New insights on the history of canids in Oceania based on mitochondrial and nuclear data (Genetica)
I've been fond of Riley Black's writing for many years now, ever since I picked up a copy of My Beloved Brontosaurus as I was starting college. I appreciate the sense of wonder she brings into her paleo-literature, especially when she is explaining scientific research or breaking down complex subjects. Not only that, her ability to remain as up-to-date as possible with the latest research and discourse had made her a go-to source of information for me for years.
So I was absolutely delighted when I heard that she was going to tackle plant evolution in her new book When the Earth was Green! Not long after its release I quickly snagged a copy.
When it comes to understanding plant life, one of the things you have to recognize is that they do not exist in a vacuum. They are intimately woven with all the other organisms in their environment, and that environment itself is more-or-less underpinned by the plants that live there. Right away Black makes this point known, and emphasizes that plants are living things. She then continues by investigating the curiosities of deep time in relation to plants, and the kinds of things people often neglect to think about when it comes to visualizing past ecosystems.
From then on the book devotes most of its pages to different snapshots of the Earth's past from 1.2 billion years ago onwards, telling the story of plant evolution in small narrative episodes. Each chapter highlights a key change or lineage in the story of plants and its relation to the story of animal evolution.
To be completely honest, I had struggled with this format during the first half of the book. I do not know what on earth was going on with my head, but I seem to have had a different vision for what this book would be like vs. what Black actually wrote. Like I wanted something more... academic and more nitty-gritty with details? But I took some time and sat with my thoughts, and then went back to her previous book The Last Days of the Dinosaurs (which I adored and read in less than a week). This style of "narrative nonfiction" - to quote Goodreads - was how Black formatted this last book, so what was my problem here? I had stopped following the Late Cretaceous chapter and decided to continue on with a more open mind. Sure enough, as I read through the Cenozoic chapters, I gained much more appreciate and love for the book.
I absolutely loved the Cenozoic chapters and Black's choices of subject material. I had relearned and felt sheer fascination with our understandings of, say, how modern tropical rainforests became a post-Mesozoic phenomena or how autumn foliage ensured the survival of microfauna in northern latitudes. I wonder if this actually means I'm more of a Cenozoic-slut than the other geologic eras, but can't say that's a fair assessment of my paleontological interests. Living in a world with rainforests and deciduous trees means that I'm curious about how these environments and ecological relations developed, so perhaps Black was tapping into my love of big history connections?
Anywho, I'm very glad I followed the book through to the end, because I was rewarded with some beautiful reflections to ponder about. True to her style, Black flips our stereotypes of paleontology on their head, and she ends the book giving some praise to the fact that the fossil record is so patchy and full of gaps. It's these gaps that have helped scientists easily study relations between taxa and understand the evolution of life, because otherwise the seemless blending of species and environments would literally break the foundations of biology and force us to rethink how we look at nature. Which... I mean, that sounds awesome and vibes with my anarchist thinking, but I do agree that we probably wouldn't have developed our understanding of big concepts in evolution and deep time as clearly as we have had things turned out that way. So I definitely appreciate those gaps and have shifted how I think about them.
Before I end this review, I just want to say that Riley Black's fusion of her gender-journey with her love of Earth's prehistory spoke to me in ways that I haven't truly recovered from. Her writing makes me want to be louder and prouder and more comfortable in my own skin than I've ever been.
Um... I don't really care about giving rankings or ratings on this blog, as I feel many people will only look at stars or numbers and not care about nuance. I'll say that, in the end, I ended up absolutely enjoying When the Earth was Green and encourage anyone with an interest in deep time to pick it up and share it with their friends. It's beautifully written and is sure to spark your imagination in some way or another. You'll certainly never look at plants the same way again...
Buy it here! And check out Riley Black's page here!
Greetings! My name is Joan, and I'm a digital artist and somewhat amateur naturalist. I graduated with a BA in Anthropology and have mainly been involved in online science communication. For those who may be aware, my most recent involvement was as a co-creator with @albertonykus of Through Time and Clades: a YouTube Natural History series in which we discussed relevant topics in zoology, paleontology, and anthropology through lectures and news-sharing.
Recently, we said goodbye to our channel due to scheduling conflicts with life/work as well as loss of energy maintaining TTC the way we had. This was never an easy decision to make, and we have always figured that our spark for sharing our interests in the world around us would always be around in some way. In our finale episode, I had pondered about continuing my journey from this show with a blog of sorts. So here we are.
Joan's Journal will serve as a hub for... well, anything and everything that comes to my interests and that I feel like sharing. Unlike TTC, however, my blog will be less structured and often stray into topics that I have interest in but actively chose to underplay in the former series. Things like politics, belief systems, and philosophy. Sounds fun!
There will still be plenty of discussion on evolutionary history, human prehistory, the diversity of life on Earth, etc. If anything I can see this blog being an archive of all the information I've gathered and learned (and will continue to actively do so) in my readings and discussions with others.
So, essentially, that's why I chose to call this blog a "journal". It's a log of my thoughts, at the end of the day. It just so happens that my thoughts will often include citations and references and be supported by science and scholarship, as well as being a vessel for my personal opinions, reflections, and beliefs.
If you enjoyed Through Time and Clades, then I hope you find some value in spending time with me and listening to what I have to say. This won't be a reboot, more of a spin-off :)
For now, I'll leave you all with something to ponder:
This is a photo I took back in 2021 at the Florida Museum of Natural History, in the Powell Hall exhibit Northwest Florida: Waterways and Wildlife.
This is part of a diorama which depicts a trading exchange at Chattahoochee Landing along the Apalachicola River in southern Florida, between two Native American nations around 1300 AD. Here are representatives of Etowah (located today in NW Georgia), one of the many towns of the Mississippian Culture that held sway in Eastern North America from the 900s AD to the dawn of European contact in the continental United States. The tall noblewoman depicted here is opening the exchange with a gift (an embossed plate) to representatives of the Fort Walton culture, an archaeological term used for the ancestral Apalachee nation whose ancestral lands are near the Apalachicola River (at left, but not shown in this photo).
This museum diorama is a window into another time, and a very beautifully and accurately depicted one at that. I often like to place my senses into scenes like this: what words were exchanged? What were did the people of either nation think about the other? Did these exchanges happen often, and, if so, how did the people plan such occasions? How formal was everything? Did people crack jokes, exchange memories, cause drama?
It's thoughts like these which make the study of the human past so fascinating to me. It's easy to see depictions like this of unnamed, long-gone peoples - whether in museums or nonfiction books - and forget that behind every face was a fully-fledged human being with all the complexity that entails. Perhaps if you lived at the time, they could be as familiar to you as your family, friends, and neighbors...
This scene took place over 700 years ago. The cultures depicted have long since changed beyond present recognition. Also consider that this diorama no longer exists. The hall underwent major renovations and reshaping back in 2023, and to my knowledge this exhibit was removed after decades on display.
So, in a sense, this is a snapshot of the past in more ways than one...
