Two stories about the natural world rounded out the day’s headlines. In Greenland, wildfires broke out across the Arctic island unusually early in the season, with experts from the Greenland Institute of Nature attributing the phenomenon to accelerating Arctic warming and the lingering effects of El Niño. “It is rare to see fires as early as June,” said Karl Brix Zinglersen, head of the institute’s Environment and Mineral Resources division, noting that the trend is consistent with broader climate change.
Meanwhile, researchers announced the discovery of the oldest known evidence of plague in Neolithic cemeteries in southeastern Siberia, dating back approximately 5,500 years. Ancient DNA extracted from the remains of hunter-gatherers and their children revealed that Yersinia pestis devastated sparse communities in catastrophic waves — likely spread after people butchered or consumed raw marmots, a practice that still causes plague deaths today.
