The Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre is a research and exhibition facility located at km 1423 (Mile 886) on the Alaska Hwy in Whitehorse

Whitehorse, Yukon

Whitehorse is Yukon's capital and largest city . It was incorporated in 1950 and is located at kilometre 1476 on the Alaska Highway in southern Yukon. Whitehorse's downtown and Riverdale areas occupy both shores of the Yukon River, which originates in British Columbia and meets the Bering Sea in...

, Yukon

Yukon

Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....

, which opened in 1997.

The focus of the interpretive centre is the story of Beringia, the 3200 km landmass stretching from the Kolyma River

Kolyma River

The Kolyma River is a river in northeastern Siberia, whose basin covers parts of the Sakha Republic, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and Magadan Oblast of Russia. Itrises in the mountains north of Okhotsk and Magadan, in the area of and...

 in Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

 to the MacKenzie River

Mackenzie River

The Mackenzie River is the largest river system in Canada. It flows through a vast, isolated region of forest and tundra entirely within the country's Northwest Territories, although its many tributaries reach into four other Canadian provinces and territories...

 in Canada, which remained non glaciated during the Pleistocene

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

 due to light snowfall from an arid climate. Beringia is of special interest to archeologists and paleontologists as it played a crucial role in the migrations of many animals and humans

Models of migration to the New World

There have been several models for the human settlement of the Americas proposed by various academic communities. The question of how, when and why humans first entered the Americas is of intense interest to archaeologists and anthropologists, and has been a subject of heated debate for centuries...

 between Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 and the Americas

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

. The term Beringia was first coined by the Swedish botanist Eric Hultén

Eric Hultén

Oskar Eric Gunnar Hultén was a Swedish botanist, plant geographer and 20th century explorer of The Arctic. He was born in Halla in Södermanland. He took his licentiate exam 1931 at Stockholm University and obtained his doctorate degree in botany at Lund University in 1937...

 in 1937.

During Beringia's long history some animals migrated Easterly (mastodons

Mastodon

Mastodons were large tusked mammal species of the extinct genus Mammut which inhabited Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Central America from the Oligocene through Pleistocene, 33.9 mya to 11,000 years ago. The American mastodon is the most recent and best known species of the group...

, gomphotheres, mammoths, various members of the deer family

Deer

Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the Cervidae family include white-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer, fallow deer, roe deer and chital. Male deer of all species and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year...

, bison

Bison

Members of the genus Bison are large, even-toed ungulates within the subfamily Bovinae. Two extant and four extinct species are recognized...

, sheep and muskoxen) others Westerly (equines

Evolution of the horse

The evolution of the horse pertains to the phylogenetic ancestry of the modern horse from the small dog-sized, forest-dwelling Hyracotherium over geologic time scales...

, camels) and yet others reveal many episodes of dispersal (such as lemming

Lemming

Lemmings are small rodents, usually found in or near the Arctic, in tundra biomes. They are subniveal animals, and together with voles and muskrats, they make up the subfamily Arvicolinae , which forms part of the largest mammal radiation by far, the superfamily Muroidea, which also includes rats,...

s and voles).

Research

Recent research includes the paleobotany

Paleobotany

Paleobotany, also spelled as palaeobotany , is the branch of paleontology or paleobiology dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments , and both the evolutionary history of plants, with a...

 around the Bluefish Caves

Bluefish Caves

Bluefish Caves is an archaeological site in the Yukon Territory of Canada from which a specimen of allegedly human-worked mammoth bone has been radiocarbon dated to 28,000 years before present ....

, habitat of ground squirrels (Spermophilus parryii

Arctic Ground Squirrel

The Arctic ground squirrel is a species of ground squirrel native to the Arctic.-Subspecies:Listed alphabetically.*S. p. ablusus Osgood, 1903...

) and their middens, Klondike gold fields

Klondike Gold Rush

The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...

, and the Old Crow

Old Crow

Old Crow is a low-priced brand of Kentucky-made straight bourbon whiskey, along with the slightly higher quality, but still inexpensive Old Crow Reserve brand. It is distilled by Beam Inc., which also produces Jim Beam and several other brands of bourbon whiskey...

 region which revealed many fossils belonging to mammals that are much rarer in Pleistocene fossil assemblages, including giant beaver (Castor ohioensis), broad-fronted moose (Alces latifrons), western camel (Camelops hesternus

Camelops

Camelops is an extinct genus of camels that once roamed western North America, where it disappeared at the end of the Pleistocene about 10,000 years ago. Its name is derived from the Greek κάμελος + , thus "camel-face."-Background:...

), American mastodon (Mammut americanum), scimitar cat (Homotherium serum), and short-faced bear (Arctodus simus). Radiocarbon dating

Radiocarbon dating

Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...

 is ongoing for many of these specimens.

Whitefish fossil approximately 2-million-year-old specimen of Coregonus beringiaensis form Ch'ijee's Bluff in the Bluefish Basin on the Porcupine River near Old Crow.

Affiliations

The Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre is affiliated with the Alliance of Natural Museums of Natural History of Canadahttp://www.beringia.com/alliance/index.html and the Virtual Museum of Canada

Virtual Museum of Canada

The Virtual Museum of Canada is Canada's national virtual museum. With a directory of over 3,000 Canadian heritage institutions and a database of over 600 virtual exhibits, the VMC brings together Canada's museums regardless of size or geographical location.The VMC includes virtual exhibits,...

.