"A new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences by an international team of researchers, including Z. Jack Tseng, a Frick Postdoctoral Fellow in the Museum’s Division of Paleontology, identifies a newly discovered 3- to 5-million-year-old Tibetan fox from the Himalayan Mountains, Vulpes qiuzhudingi, as the oldest close relative of the living Arctic fox Vulpes lagopus. The finding lends support to the idea that the evolution of present-day animals of the Arctic region is intimately connected to ancestors that first became adapted for life in cold regions in the high-altitude environments of the Tibetan plateau." - Jessie

"The origin of the cold-adapted Pleistocene megafauna has usually been sought either in the arctic tundra or in the cool steppes elsewhere. But the team’s new fossil assemblage boosts an alternative scenario, which the authors call the “out of Tibet” hypothesis. It argues that some of the Ice Age megafauna (which in North America include the woolly mammoth, saber-toothed cat, giant sloths, and others) used ancient Tibet as a “training ground” for developing adaptations that allowed them to cope with the severe climatic conditions. These Tibetan ancestors were thus already adapted to cold climates by the start of the Ice Age (2.6-.01 million years ago). " - Jessie