Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre

The Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre is a research and exhibition facility in Whitehorse in the Yukon. It was opened in 1997.

The focus of the interpretive center is Beringia, a region between eastern Siberia and the Yukon, which always represented a bridge between Asia and America over the last 70 million years. The coastal strip up to 125 m lying below the present sea level provides for the settlement of the Americas is an important area of ​​research, especially as here the probably the oldest relics of human cultures in Northeast Asia and North America were found. Eric Hultén, a Swedish botanist who in 1937 proposed the name " Beringia ". Today, the field of research Beringia comprises the area between the North Russian Kolyma and Mackenzie in Canada.

Main research areas are habitats at Klondike and around Old Crow in the territory of the Vuntut Gwitchin that work together with paleontologists. During an excavation in 2006, there were more than 2,000 bones from the Pleistocene, many of woolly mammoths ( locality Whitestone River) and horses. There are also sites at which giant beaver (Castor ohioensis ), West Camels ( Camelops hesternus ), mastodon (Mammut americanum ), saber-toothed cats ( Homotherium serum ) and short-faced bear ( Arctodus simus ), peccary ( Platygonus compressus ) and the giant sloth Megalonyx jeffersonii found. They come from a time when large lakes were at Old Crow ( about 40,000 to 15,000 years ago ).

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Conductor Grant Zazula.

Events

The Yukon Science Institute holds regular lectures here. In addition, under the title Education and Kids Corner will be held Corner teaching programs for different ages.