Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
By Kenneth Richard on 13. April 2026
Fuerteventura, one of the eight major Canary Islands, was not the “desert in the ocean” it is today throughout the Early to Middle Holocene.
Scientists (Sánchez-Marco et al., 2026) have recovered the remains of several bird species known to reside at the edges of bodies of water (e.g., lagoons, lakes, rivers) with riparian vegetation and dense forests from a cave in Fuerteventura, the most arid of the Canary Islands. The bones date to ~9000 to 5000 years ago.
This discovery “unexpectedly” reveals the Holocene climate was much warmer (as much as “3 to 7°C”) than present. It was also “much wetter than it is today” a few thousand years ago, and thus regions that are today arid and largely uninhabitable were recently able to host to far more plant and animal species diversity.
The cooler Fuerteventura environment is today covered in sand dunes and classified as an arid desert, as it receives only 100-150 mm of rain annually. The island no longer supports water fowl habitat or any other species dependent on large annual rainfall totals.
https://notrickszone.com/2026/04/13/cave-discovery-reveals-todays-desert-climates-were-recently-far-warmer-wetter-teeming-with-life/
