The Sahara used to be full of fish
The Sahara desert didn't always look this dry. (DepositPhotos/)When you think of the Sahara, seafood probably isn’t the first thing that springs to mind. For thousands of years, this massive desert stretching across North Africa has been home to just the scant few animals adapted to life in hot, arid land.But during the Holocene, the Sahara was lush—and full of fish.A study published last week in PLOS One reports that out of 17,551 faunal remains found in the Takarkori rock shelter in the central Sahara, 80 percent were fish. That’s a pretty stark difference from the dry desert we think of today.“Southwestern Libya is presently an inhospitable place—it is among the most arid locations in the Sahara—so it is really extraordinary,” says Kathleen Nicoll, a professor of geography at the University of Utah who was not involved in the study.The fossil record also shows swimmers seeing a decline over the...