Beringia's Lost World: Where Woolly Mammoths Once Roamed Between Continents

Thousands of years ago, a vast stretch of land linked Siberia to Alaska, forming the Bering Land Bridge. Known as Beringia, this icy corridor allowed animals and early humans to cross between continents. Today, its remnants lie hidden beneath the waves of the Bering Sea.

During the last Ice Age, Beringia spanned nearly 1,000 miles, creating a thriving ecosystem of grasses, shrubs, and winding rivers. Herds of woolly mammoths, bison, and saber-toothed cats roamed freely across the landscape. The first humans reached North America around 20,000 years ago by trekking this land bridge, eventually settling two vast continents.

The land did not vanish overnight. Instead, rising seas slowly swallowed Beringia over millennia, forcing animals and people to adapt, migrate, or disappear. Indigenous communities in Alaska and Siberia still share oral traditions of hunters following herds and families seeking new lands across the bridge.

Beneath the Bering Sea, the cold waters have preserved traces of this lost world. Scientists have uncovered ancient riverbeds, fossilised plants, and bones of mammoths, bison, and horses. These discoveries offer rare glimpses into the animals that once thrived there.

Yet climate change now threatens what remains. Warming waters and melting sea ice are altering the seabed, risking the destruction of this underwater time capsule.

The Bering Sea today teems with marine life—whales, seals, and fish—navigating the same waters where mammoths once walked. While the land bridge is gone, its legacy endures in the stories of Indigenous peoples and the fossils buried beneath the waves. Without stronger protections, however, even these remnants may soon be lost to a changing climate.