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Photo: Finn Norgren / TT
A type of elephant had probably lived in the Nordic countries. Image of archive.
Photo: Berit Roald / NTB / TT
Brown bears used to go down the coast of Denmark.
If it was not for humans, cave lions and a type of elephant had walked in the north.
Now, a research team has mapped a database of nearly 6,000 living and extinct mammals.
by international researchers led by a group of the University of Gothenburg
For the first time, the impact of humanity on species and their spread has been taken into account [19659007] – The goal is to try to understand how a world without defining, and the relationship between all living species living today. According to Søren Faurby, biologist and researcher at the University of Gothenburg and leader of the group, human beings play a major role in the impact on biodiversity.
Lions, elephants and bears
The database extends over 130,000 years
According to Søren Faurby, the species of cave and extinct species are examples of 39 animals that have lived in northern Europe.
– Another example is that brown bears were previously in flat areas near the coast in Denmark and Denmark. Spain at the Mediterranean Sea. Now we find them the most in mountain areas, he says.
Brown bears have also lived in Mexico and North Africa.
The survey concerns the whole world. It was made from existing data, old maps, articles, live mammals and fossil data to see where the animals would be today.
Open to all
The database is open to all It is intended to be searched for further searches The prediction is to predict how climate change will affect different species. Researchers at the origin of the study want to use it to restore biodiversity.
– Of course, it is difficult to restore undisturbed animals, but we can read the best conditions to preserve and, to a certain extent, restore or increase biodiversity, "says Søren. In order to create a database comprising both live and extinct mammals, the research team consolidated existing data, added old maps and studied a large amount of articles and others Databases to see how the natural distribution of the species is could have been if it was not bothered by the man. In addition, they combined DNA from live animals with fossil-derived data from different researcher sites around the world with a data algorithm. In this way, they can predict where the extinct species would integrate into the mammals living today.
The database is described in the scientific article "The Phylogenetic Atlas of Macroecology of Mammals."
Author: Alexander Antonelli and Søren Faurby at University of Gothenburg and Matt Davis, Jens Christian Svenning, R.Ø. Pedersen and S.D. Schowanek at the University of Aarhus
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