Alaska magazine highlights UC's discoveries about ancient migrations of caribou

Alaska magazine highlighted an ongoing research project led by a University of Cincinnati ecologist that is tracking ancient caribou across thousands of years and hundreds of miles of Arctic tundra.

Joshua Miller, an assistant professor of geosciences in UC's College of Arts and Sciences, has spent years exploring the wilderness of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to collect ancient antlers, some of which have sat on the tundra undisturbed for thousands of years.

Researchers traveled rivers by inflatable raft to survey the Coastal Plain for shed caribou antlers in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Photo/Joshua Miller

He and his research partners explore river valleys using a rigid inflatable boat before a bush plane picks them up on the coast of the Beaufort Sea.

Miller discovered that caribou have been using the same calving grounds to give birth to their babies for more than 3,000 years.

Female caribou shed their antlers within days of giving birth, leaving behind a record of their annual travels across Alaska and Canada’s Yukon that persists on the cold tundra for hundreds or even thousands of years. Researchers recovered antlers that have sat undisturbed on the arctic tundra since the Bronze Age.

“To walk around the landscape and pick up something that's 3,000 years old is truly amazing,” Miller told Alaska magazine.

The antlers represent a time capsule of the animal's life, diet and travels across the landscape that Miller and his research partners are unlocking using isotopic analysis.

His research demonstrates how important this part of the refuge is to caribou and highlights the longstanding and historic reliance on the migration among native people who hunt caribou for subsistence.

“What other calving grounds have similarly ancient ecological legacies?” Miller asked.

Featured image at top: UC Assistant Professor Joshua Miller holds up a caribou antler he collected in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Photo/Colleen Kelley/UC

The Porcupine caribou herd has been using the same calving grounds for thousands of years, according to researchers from the University of Cincinnati. Photo/Lucian Provines

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