Grab your fedora and whip and cue the Indiana Jones theme because this Saturday, Oct. 21, is International Archaeology Day. To mark the occasion, Long Ago Yukon is hosting the first lecture in its 2023-2024 speaker series at 1 p.m. in the Beringia Interpretive Centre’s auditorium, which will be presented by paleoecologist Emily Lindsey.
Lindsey is the assistant associate curator and excavation site director at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, California. She is also an adjunct faculty in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA.
Her presentation for Long Ago Yukon will examine how humans and a warming climate contributed to Pleistocene mammal extinctions and the alteration of California’s landscapes. The study that the lecture is based on focused on iconic Pleistocene mammals, including sabertoothed cats, dire wolves, American lions, camels and ground sloths, and ancient bison, among others.
“[The presentation] is predominantly focused on paleontology, but our story considers the roles climate and environmental changes and human activities played in the extinction event. Our data on ancient Californians is largely circumstantial, but the study sheds light on the antiquity of human-ecosystem interactions in this region and potentially has significant implications for land management of southern California ecosystems,” Lindsey told the News via email.
When asked what she hopes attendees will take away from the lecture, she says, “Extinctions are complex and happen on regional scales. Human activities and rapid climate change, processes similar to what we are seeing today, can push ecosystems to tipping points.”
Long Ago Yukon is a Whitehorse-based group that works to encourage interest in anthropology, archaeology and paleontology through its speaker program and other events. It also aims to support the protection of the Yukon’s archaeological and paleontological heritage.
“It is a group that I organized back after we had a global icefields archaeology conference here in 2013, and so, that was the motivation to start [the group],” Michael Dougherty, co-convenor of the group, told the News. “We’ve had, usually, six speakers a year since then. This is our ninth year.”
Those unable to attend the in-person lecture at the centre can watch online on the Long Ago Yukon Facebook page or via Zoom at https://lakeheadu.zoom.us/j/96866647812. In addition to Lindsey’s lecture, the Beringia Interpretive Centre will be hosting its own activities in celebration of International Archaeology Day on Oct. 21.
International Archaeology Day is an annual event held on the third Saturday in October to promote the study of our human past and the field’s impact on society.
READ MORE: Mummified baby woolly mammoth discovered in Yukon was likely weeks old when she died
Contact Matthew Bossons at matthew.bossons@yukon-news.com