Word: inuit
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...rise to things that walked, ran and crept on land. The fishapod appears to be a crucial link in the long chain that over time led to amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, birds and mammals. Indeed, Tiktaalik roseae, the official name bestowed on the fishapod (in the language of the local Inuit, tiktaalik means "large fish in stream"), falls anatomically between the lobe-finned fish Panderichthys, found in Latvia in the 1920s, and primitive tetrapods like Acanthostega, whose full fossil was recovered in Greenland not quite two decades...
...released today, were dug out of rock formations on Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian Arctic, by paleontologists from the University of Chicago and several other institutions. Its nickame, for reasons that will become clear, is "fishapod"; it's more formally called Tiktaalik ("large fish in stream," in the local Inuit language). Fishapod dates from about 383 million years ago. It had the scales, teeth and gills of a fish, but also a big, curved rib cage that suggests the creature had lungs as well. The ribs interlock, moreover, unlike a fish's, implying they were able to bear fishapod...
...Inuit report the same thing. A hunting, fishing and gathering people, they collect their food from the ice eight months a year. Or at least they try to. The land and sea have become noticeably less predictable in the past five to 10 years, says Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chairwoman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. While southern Canadians may bask in unusual winter heat, if ice is too thin to ride over and too thick to take a boat through, it is as if someone closed all the roads to the Inuits' grocery stores. "Ice and snow represent transportation, represent mobility...
...That means food isn't always there even when the Inuit can travel. Wildlife may well be less adaptable to extreme changes than humans are. When polar bears can't find prey, there are few alternatives; the bears burn their own fat, releasing into their systems the contaminants stored there--pesticides and other industrial chemicals that accumulate in cool Arctic waters and build up in the food chain. Other animals are also in trouble. In February, in what should have been midwinter in the far north, Nunavut's capital city, Iqaluit, was a balmy 5*noneC and rainy. When...
...There are other human-health consequences of the shifting biology that accompanies climate variation. Warming may mean that germs reproduce faster, increasing Inuit exposure to animal diseases, such as trichinosis. Warming could probably also damage public-health infrastructure--sewage systems, water pipes and reservoirs--as the permafrost on which it was built melts. And for Inuit communities, already reordering rapidly through modernization, the extra social dislocation brought by a warmer climate may bring stress, mental health problems and increased substance abuse. On the positive side, frostbite may decrease, along with cardiac problems brought on by heavy exertion in extreme cold...