Press releases 2020

The world is facing the greatest threat since the beginning of mankind. This is not the current pandemic, but its cause, the global biodiversity crisis - triggered by massive human intervention in global material and energy flows and the destruction of habitats. The resulting species extinction is occurring at an unprecedented rate and is being accelerated by the same processes that cause climate change.

The Natural History Museum Vienna and the Center of Natural History (CeNak) at the University of Hamburg are jointly investigating cold-water reefs located south of Iceland and have found countless hardly explored amphipods. The results of the research, which species occur here and population genetic effects of past climatic changes, were recently published.

Teeth are one of the most resistant organic materials in nature and can survive for millions of years. They are often the only evidence of extinct vertebrates providing a wealth of information about their dietary habits. A new study with the participation of Jürgen Kriwet from the University of Vienna now has found out that teeth of sharks were already an important food nutrition source for bacteria in the otherwise nutrient-poor deep sea more than 100 million years ago.