London. How can we reconstruct the environmental changes during the last 150 years? Worldwide, rain and erosion eat away at the slopes and bringsoil into rivers and lakes. Here the deposits of eroded soils, formed sediments to accumulate on the bottom of the lakes over the centuries and millennia. Analysing these sediments and trapped DNA allows us to reconstruct past environments and to recognise the animals that populated them. It is precisely from the examination of ancient DNA present in the sediments of a small lake in one of the most remote areas of the planet, that a group of Italian and French scientists, led by Francesco Ficetola, Professor from the University of Milan, was able to rebuild the amazing history of a radical environmental change. This change occurred not by some great climatic or geological upheaval, but simply by a handful of rabbits, thus proving how even extremely limited actions can produce irreversible changes. The work was subsequently published in “Science Advances”. (9colonne)
