In Oceans, narrator Pierce Brosnan notes that, while all life on earth began in the sea, there are a few creatures that returned, abandoning legs and feet for flippers and underwater grace.

This is true, for example, of seals, who, like other Pinnipeds, evolved from “bear like” land mammals some 23 million years ago. In 2007, researchers working in the arctic found the remains of Puijila darwini, a semi-aquatic carnivore with webbed feet and a seal-like skull. This early ancestor of the modern day seal gives researchers insight into how Pinnipeds returned to the sea, in what was then a temperate forest with moderate winters.

Unlike modern-day seals, the “walking seal” was most likely comfortable hunting on land, only occasionally venturing into shallower waters.

Read more: Puijila: A Prehistoric Walking Seal Home Page.

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On Monday, I blogged about the ice breakup the Catlin Arctic Survey team experienced at their camp the previous week.

The video above, filmed previous to the ice breakup at camp, shows the extreme conditions the team has been experiencing this year. It starts with some fast-moving ice, and goes on to show the difficult conditions the team traverses in the course of attaining water and ice samples.

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This morning, I got an email from Graham with the current location of the Torngat expedition party. And sure enough, when Thomas checked in via the AK Expedition Twitter feed, he noted that the group was at base camp:

AT TORNGAT BASECAMP WITH FIRST GROUP OF FOUR. A RAINY DAY BUT SPIRITS ARE HIGH. TOMORROW A DAY OF LOOKING FOR POLAR BEAR!

This expedition is new for this year, timed to coincide with polar bear mothers leaving their dens. The group is also hoping for some fantastic northern light displays, and sure of some amazing scenery among Eastern Canada’s highest mountain peaks!

We hope to get some field photos soon, and expect to hear more from Thomas via Twitter in the coming days!

(Edited to add: that image above is from Google Maps, and shows the area during the summer. Right now, a more current aerial image would look a lot whiter!)

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Over on our Facebook fan page, Gaia posted an article about NASA’s Operation Icebridge, which is tracking changes in the size and thickness of the earth’s polar ice. The mission’s second year kicks off today, when NASA aircraft will arrive in Greenland.

“NASA’s IceBridge mission is characterizing the changes occurring in the world’s polar ice sheets,” said Tom Wagner, cryosphere program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The mission’s goal is to collect the most important data for improving predictive models of sea level rise and global climate change.”

Utilizing NASA’s unique capabilities, the mission provides scientists with detailed data on the changing face of polar ice, providing an unprecedented breadth and depth of information.

Read more:

Mission Page: Icebridge

NASA Press release

NASA TV (airing video and information about all NASA missions, including Icebridge)

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I don’t know about you, but every spring, the switch to daylight savings wreaks havoc on my internal clock — for days, I’m out of sorts, eating at odd hours and feeling sleepy all morning long.

Arctic Reindeer have it so much easier. Most of us mammals have an internal clock, where hormones rise and fall throughout the day in a regular cycle. This circadian rhythm helps us know when to wake up and go to bed, and, though influenced by daylight and darkness, keeps a fairly regular 24-hour clock, even in the absence of light/dark stimuli.

Not so the reindeer. These animals live in a land where summer days stretch on indefinitely, and winter nights last for days on end. New research conducted by the University of Manchester in England shows that, while the Arctic Reindeer sleep regularly — after they eat, approximately eight to ten times a day — and are affected by levels of light and dark, they lack the internal clock that keeps animals in southern climates on a regular schedule.

Our findings imply that evolution has come up with a means of switching off the cellular clockwork,” [study author Andrew] Loudon said. “Such daily clocks may be positively a hindrance in environments where there is no reliable light-dark cycle for much of the year.”

Because the Earth is tilted on its axis, the Arctic is pointed toward the sun during the summer months, which keeps the sun perpetually above the horizon during this time. During the winter, the opposite is true, and the Arctic is plunged into months of darkness. The same is true of the Antarctic.

Instead, light and dark signals that come during the year’s two equinoxes (fall and spring) could be enough to jumpstart certain processes in the reindeer, such as the annual reproductive cycle, the researchers say.

via MSNBC: Body Clock of Arctic Reindeer Ticks Differently

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Last week, we featured some footage from the Spanish television show Desafio Extremo, which features travel adventures all over the globe. Arctic Kingdom had the pleasure of bringing the Desafio Extremo crew north for their Buceo Ártico episode, and we’re really excited with the moments they were able to capture on film.

Over on the Desafio Extremo website, they’re hosting a poll, where viewers can vote for their favorite trip from the current season. Personally, we’re partial to one episode in particular. But really, can you blame us?

In the video below (Jesús y María al final logran encontrarse con los narvales) Jesús and Maria encounter a narwhal at last. There’s gorgeous underwater footage leading up to it, but, if you’re too impatient, skip to 2:30 to see the whale!

Vote Arctic! Vote Often!

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Inspired by yesterday’s post, this week’s new content on Flickr features some of our Ice Diving photos from the last few years.

Visit our Flickr page for photos of ice diving, dog sledding, ballooning and more. And if you’d like to read about how Tom found the harpoon in the top photo, that’s #8 on his Top Ten Floe Edge Moments from 2009!

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All this week, VBC will be posting an online documentary about Heimo Korth, one of the last remaining residents of America’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Established in 1980 by then-president Jimmy Carter, the Refuge protects 19 million acres of Arctic wilderness from developers, hunters, and oil interests. The family followed by the documentary are the last white settlers to live on the land year round, one of six families that were grandfathered in when the park was formed.

The documentary explores the day-to-day realities of their lives, showcasing the skills and resilience needed to survive at the edge of the habitable world.

Parts One and Two are already online, with the rest posting throughout the week.

via Online documentary about one of the last people living in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Boing Boing.

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Recent research indicates that the Arctic tern, which breeds in the Arctic in the summertime before flying south to ‘winter’ in the Antarctic during the southern hemisphere’s summer months, flies further than previously believed.

In previous years, scientists had only been able to track individual sea birds as far as the coast of South Africa before losing track of them, making it impossible to determine how far an individual bird or flock trekked in the course of a year.

An article published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America describes how a team of researchers led by Dr. Carsten Egevang of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources in Nuuk used miniature geolocators to track eleven terns from colonies in Iceland and Greenland as they made their annual migration. The new data showed that some of the birds flew more than 50,000 miles in one year, taking a more meandering route than scientists had suspected.

Over the course of one bird’s 34-year life span, this commute adds up to a total of 2.4 million km , the equivalent of three journeys to the moon and back.

50,000-mile round trip makes Arctic tern the ultimate commuter – Times Online .

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Over at the Circumpolar Blog, George Lessard recently posted a video:

via Circumpolar Blog: Inuit Drum Song ;Arctic Bay, Nunavut, Canada.

The two girls in the video are singing a traditional melody, accompanied by a man playing a qilaut, or wind drum, made of stretched caribou skin.

Curious about the qilaut, I did some more research and came across another video this time played by Angaangaq Lyberth, an Inuit elder from Greenland.

Accompanying the video is a description of the instrument:

Qilaut, the Eskimo Wind Drum, is a circle that has no beginning nor ending, in which we all belong.

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