{"id":41884,"date":"2021-02-11T08:11:44","date_gmt":"2021-02-11T13:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/?p=41884"},"modified":"2021-02-11T08:10:55","modified_gmt":"2021-02-11T13:10:55","slug":"caribou-corner-history-of-the-lake-superior-caribou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/2021\/02\/11\/caribou-corner-history-of-the-lake-superior-caribou\/","title":{"rendered":"Caribou Corner – History of the Lake Superior Caribou"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>The ancestors of caribou (or reindeer as they are known in Eurasia) moved out of South America about 5 million years ago.\u00a0 Caribou appear to have speciated in Beringia, which is the name for the far northwest part of North America and the far northeast of Russia, next to the Bering Sea. \u00a0This occurred during the Pleistocene epoch, or the Ice Age as it is commonly known, about 2,580,000 years ago to just 11,700 years ago.\u00a0 The earliest known caribou fossil is from Alaska and is about 1.8 million years old.\u00a0 Caribou would have been around for a while before that \u2013 so from maybe 2 million years ago.\u00a0 By contrast, early humans emerged only about 300,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Caribou survived several glacial advances and retreats of the Pleistocene.\u00a0 But it is the last advance, called the Wisconsin glaciation, that we know a bit more about in relation to caribou.\u00a0 The Wisconsin glaciation occurred from about 75,000 to about 11,000 years ago, and reached its maximum about 25,000 to 21,000 years ago. \u00a0The advancing ice moved caribou into two main refuges in North America.\u00a0 One refuge was in Beringia, in the northwest, where the caribou first evolved.\u00a0 It appears that this is where the ancestors of the barren-ground caribou and many of the mountain caribou were.\u00a0 Another refuge was in the Appalachian Mountains of what is now the eastern United States.\u00a0\u00a0 It is here that the woodland caribou were.\u00a0 These were the ancestors of the few remaining Lake Superior caribou.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This refuge in the Appalachians had interesting characteristics that allowed caribou to survive south of the ice sheet.\u00a0 Back then, the mountains there were mainly forested with jack pine and spruce and many had bare tundra tops \u2013 quite a bit different than the lush nut-producing hardwoods there now.\u00a0 So the mountains would have been very good caribou habitat at that time, with lots of ground and tree lichens.\u00a0 The animal community also seems to have been important.\u00a0 The other main herbivores in the mountains were pig-like peccaries and tapirs, which were a bit smaller and more abundant than the caribou. \u00a0They may have diverted predation away from the caribou.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even more interesting is the spatial separation from the large numbers of other Pleistocene mammals that occupied the flatter terrain to the west of the Appalachians.\u00a0 This area to the west had abundant very large mammals like mammoths (up to 7300 kg, or 8 tons), mastodons (to 5400 kg, a puny 6 tons), ground sloths (to 1400 kg, the weight of a car), stag moose (to over 700 kg, our moose get to about 500 kg), woodland muskox (to over 400 kg), and giant beavers (to 125 kg, our beavers average 20 kg).\u00a0 These herbivores supported very large predators like short-faced bears (up to 800 kg, black bears are usually less than 250 kg), sabre toothed cats (to 280 kg), and dire and gray wolves (to 80 kg).\u00a0 These predators would make short work of the relatively small caribou (up to 150 kg).\u00a0 It is thought that the caribou separated themselves from these other Pleistocene herbivores and their predators to avoid predation. \u00a0To this day caribou still use this strategy of separation to avoid the larger number of wolves and bears in areas with more moose and deer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, most of the large Pleistocene herbivores and their predators went extinct.\u00a0 The causes of these extinctions are not clear, but may be related to overhunting of both the herbivores and their predators by the first humans moving into the area.\u00a0 This also resulted in changes in habitat, and there was some climate change thrown in.\u00a0 Caribou may have benefited from the loss of these large herbivores and their predators, and were then able to move out of the Appalachians and all along the forest edge following the retreating ice across the continent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The ice left the north shore of Lake Superior about 10,000 years ago.\u00a0 The area was actually reforested quite quickly after the glaciers left, so caribou would probably have been north of the lake at least 9000 years ago, and earlier along the south shore.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As the ice receded, the caribou would also have been accompanied by the first humans moving into the Lake Superior area.\u00a0 Caribou were very important to these people for food, hides, and tools.\u00a0 Yet caribou and people lived successfully together in this area for the next few thousand years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then, less than 200 years ago, things started to change \u2013 and not for the better.\u00a0 Today there are hardly any caribou left in the Lake Superior area, and we are about to lose the last few on the mainland there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In summary:\u00a0\u00a0 From their start about 2 million years ago, caribou have survived the many glacial advances of the Ice Age, the Pleistocene large mammal extinction, and the first human invasion of North America.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Coming up next:\u00a0\u00a0 The recent history of the Lake Superior caribou and why there are so few left.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you would like to know more about the Lake Superior caribou and how to save the last of the mainland caribou there, see <\/em>www.lakesuperiorcaribou.ca<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Your caribou stories and sightings are also welcome \u2013 no matter how old or young.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ancestors of caribou (or reindeer as they are known in Eurasia) moved out of South America about 5 million years ago.\u00a0 Caribou appear to have speciated in Beringia, which is the name for the far northwest part of North America and the far northeast of Russia, next to the Bering Sea. \u00a0This occurred during …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":41266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2823],"class_list":["post-41884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-caribou-corner"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-17 02:25:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41884"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41886,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41884\/revisions\/41886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}