Vivian Underhill, a researcher formerly at Northeastern University, has been studying this unexpected phenomenon.

“Tulare Lake was the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi River. It’s really difficult to imagine that now,” she says.

Tulare Lake returns

Often dubbed the “ghost lake,” Tulare Lake vanished about 130 years ago due to extensive human intervention.

But in the spring of 2023, after massive winter storms and significant snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada, the lake roared back to life.

The water overwhelmed human-made systems designed to drain the basin, submerging thousands of acres of fertile farmland that once produced pistachios, almonds, cotton, and safflower.

The reborn lake stretches out with a seemingly endless blue horizon.

Yet, unlike Lake Tahoe’s cool breezes and recreational appeal, Tulare Lake offers little respite from the heat. The air is still, and a thin layer of high clouds does little to shield the sun.

Nature reclaims the land

Despite the challenges, the lake’s return has revitalized local ecosystems. Ducks, egrets, and other waterfowl have flock to its shores.

Frogs now wade at the water’s edge, ready to dive in at the slightest disturbance. Tule grass has begun to sprout along the shoreline, signaling a revival of plant life that hasn’t been seen here in generations.

Underhill notes the historical significance, saying, “Once, there was so much water that a steamship could carry agricultural supplies from the Bakersfield area up to Fresno and then up to San Francisco.”

That’s nearly 300 miles of navigable waterways that connected communities and supported commerce.

Tulare Lake hidden in plain site

To travelers passing through the arid San Joaquin Valley today, the existence of such a vast lake seems almost mythical.

“It’s hard to imagine such a large body of water coexisting alongside such an arid landscape,” Underhill remarks. Yet, in the 1800s, “Fresno was a lakeside town.”

Back then, Tulare Lake was fed primarily by snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada.

“There’s no natural outlet within the valley,” Underhill explains, “so the water collects to form a lake.” The indigenous Tachi Yokut tribe called it “Pa’ashi,” and it was central to their way of life.

The disappearance of Tulare Lake began in the late 1850s and early 1860s.

“The state of California’s desire to take public land and put it into private ownership propelled the lake’s decline,” Underhill explained.

“When we say ‘public land,’ that is historically indigenous land that the state of California blanket-proclaimed as ‘public.’”

This process, known as “reclamation,” aimed to convert inundated or desert land into arable farmland.

“If people could drain that land,” Underhill says, “they would be granted ownership of parts of that land. So there was a big incentive for white settlers to start doing that work.”

This led to the construction of hundreds of irrigation canals crisscrossing the valley, diverting water away from the lake.

Modern-day concerns

Today, the reemergence of Tulare Lake poses new challenges. The floodwaters have engulfed private lands, turning fields into vast stretches of water.

Signs warning against trespassing dot the shoreline, reminding everyone that wading or boating is technically prohibited.

More troubling is what’s hidden beneath the surface. The waters have submerged storage sheds containing fertilizers and chemicals, manure piles, electrical wires, and sharp farm machinery.

These hazards not only pose risks to anyone venturing into the lake but also raise environmental concerns about contamination.

Uncertain future of Tulare Lake

Local officials now speculate that this latest incarnation could also take years to fully recede.

“California just got inundated with snow in the winter and then rain in the spring,” Underhill points out.

Such weather patterns accelerate snowmelt, causing rapid runoff into the basin where Tulare Lake sits.

“All that snow and rain in the Sierra still runs into the depression where Tulare Lake once stood,” she adds.

Reflecting on the past

The story of Tulare Lake is not just about water returning to a dry basin; it’s a narrative intertwined with history, culture, and environmental change.

The lake’s disappearance was a result of deliberate actions to reshape the land for agriculture, often at the expense of indigenous communities and natural ecosystems.

Underhill emphasizes the colonial undertones of this transformation. “It was a deeply settler colonial project that proceeded in fits and starts,” she says.

The push to privatize land and the incentives offered for reclamation led to dramatic alterations of the landscape.

Why does any of this matter?

As Tulare Lake reclaims its historic footprint, it serves as a reminder of nature’s resilience and the lasting impacts of human intervention.

The revival has brought back species that haven’t been seen in the area for decades, offering a glimpse into what the region might have looked like before extensive farming took over.

At the same time, the challenges posed by the lake’s return highlight the complexities of balancing human needs with environmental stewardship.

The submerged farmlands represent significant economic losses, and the potential environmental hazards lurking beneath the water pose risks that will need to be addressed.

As Underhill aptly puts it, witnessing the lake’s return is both surprising and profound. It challenges us to reconsider our relationship with the land and the long-term consequences of our actions.

Published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the research reveals how these mysterious animals defied expectations by diversifying in the harsh, resource-poor environment of the bathypelagic zone—the open ocean depths ranging from 3,300 to 13,000 feet below the surface.

From the seafloor to open waters

The study, led by biologists including Kory Evans of Rice University and his former undergraduate student Rose Faucher, investigated the evolutionary progression of anglerfish (Lophiiformes) as they moved from seafloor habitats to the deep sea’s open waters.

By employing advanced genetic analysis and 3D imaging of museum specimens, the researchers reconstructed the anglerfish’s evolutionary tree and identified the morphological innovations that enabled them to thrive in one of Earth’s most challenging environments.

Unique adaptations of deep-sea anglerfish

While anglerfish are famous for their bioluminescent lures that dangle from their heads to attract prey in the deep sea’s eternal darkness, their evolutionary tale encompasses much more than this notable feature.

The study revealed that deep-sea pelagic anglerfish (ceratioids) descended from benthic, or seafloor-dwelling, ancestors.

These ancestors inhabited the continental slope before venturing into the bathypelagic zone’s open waters—a shift that paved the way for rapid evolutionary changes.

The ceratioids developed characteristics such as larger jaws, smaller eyes, and laterally compressed bodies—adaptations suited to an environment with scarce food and no sunlight.

Surprising diversity of anglerfish

Despite these directional trends, ceratioids exhibited remarkable variability in body shapes, ranging from the typical globose anglerfish to elongated forms like the “wolftrap” phenotype, which features a jaw structure resembling a trap.

This was the most unexpected finding of the study, as the bathypelagic zone did not limit evolution as previously thought, despite its apparent lack of ecological diversity.

Instead, anglerfish achieved high levels of phenotypic disparity, surpassing their benthic relatives in both shallow and deep waters.

This suggests that, rather than being constrained by the deep sea’s environmental challenges, ceratioids explored new evolutionary avenues, diversifying their body forms and hunting strategies.

“With their unique traits like bioluminescent lures and large oral gapes, deep-sea anglerfish may be one of the few documented examples of adaptive radiation in the resource-limited bathypelagic zone,” said Evans, a co-corresponding author on the paper and assistant professor of biosciences.

“These traits likely gave anglerfish an edge in exploiting scarce resources and navigating the extreme conditions of their environment, although we don’t have strong evidence directly linking this diversity to this kind of resource specialization.”

Evans pointed out that the research allows for the possibility that nonadaptive processes, such as relaxed selection or random mutations, might have also contributed to the observed variability.

Anglerfish evolutionary trends

The researchers also compared fish groups across different habitats and uncovered more surprising results.

Coastal species like frogfish, which live in diverse and productive coral reef environments, displayed much lower rates of evolutionary change than their deep-sea counterparts.

“The idea that a resource-poor, homogenous environment—like being surrounded on all sides by nothing but water – would produce diverse body and skull plans is really counterintuitive in this field,” said Faucher, who was co-first author of the paper along with Elizabeth Christina Miller, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine.

“When fish have different features to interact with, like corals and plants in shallow water or sand and rocks on the seafloor, that’s when we would expect fish to have a lot of variation in shape. Instead, we’re seeing it in these deep-sea fish who have nothing but water to interact with.”

Methodology and breakthrough findings

To carry out this study, the researchers utilized a combination of advanced methods. They constructed a phylogeny of anglerfish using data from 1,092 genetic loci across 132 species.

This represented about 38% of the described species and was supplemented by fossil calibrations and genomic data to estimate divergence times and ancestral habitats.

Morphological data were gathered from museum specimens, including linear body measurements and 3D skull shape analyses via micro-CT scans.

To assess evolutionary trends, they applied phylogenetic comparative methods to evaluate phenotypic and lineage diversification, while disparity analyses measured the extent of morphological variation across anglerfish groups and habitats.

They then used Bayesian models to reconstruct ancestral habitats, revealing that ceratioids originated from benthic ancestors before moving to the pelagic zone.

Finally, principal component analyses visualized how anglerfish occupied different regions of phenotypic space, shedding light on evolutionary trends in body, skull, and jaw shapes.

“Anglerfish are a perfect example of how life can innovate under extreme constraints,” said Evans. “This work not only enhances our understanding of deep-sea biodiversity but also illustrates the resilience and creativity of evolution.”

Understanding life in extreme environments

The significance of this study extends beyond the evolutionary history of anglerfish. It offers valuable insights into how life adapts to extreme environments.

The deep sea is one of Earth’s least understood ecosystems, yet it plays a crucial role in global biodiversity and the planet’s carbon cycle.

Understanding how organisms like anglerfish succeed in such conditions helps scientists predict how life might respond to environmental changes, including those caused by climate change.

Moreover, the study addresses broader questions in macroevolution: how new species arise, adapt, and diversify.

By demonstrating that even resource-poor environments can foster significant evolutionary radiation, the research challenges conventional wisdom and opens new pathways for studying evolution in extreme habitats.

It turns out they weren’t just grabbing any stone that was easy to break; they had specific preferences and technical skills in choosing the right material.

Archaeologists Eiki Suga and Seiji Kadowaki have been exploring this fascinating aspect of early human behavior.

They’re from Nagoya University in Japan, and their recent research offers new insights into how Paleolithic humans selected rocks for tool-making.

Their study, published in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, focuses on prehistoric sites dating from 70,000 to 30,000 years ago.

These sites are in the Jebel Qalkha area of southern Jordan, a crucial region as Homo sapiens expanded from Africa into Eurasia.

Early humans, rocks, and tools

As early humans moved into new territories, they relied on stone tools made from materials like obsidian and flint.

Understanding how they crafted these tools helps archaeologists piece together aspects of their culture and daily life.

Suga and Kadowaki analyzed flint nodules from outcrops that ancient people used during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods.

They wanted to see if early humans were intentionally selecting certain types of flint based on its properties.

They hypothesized that these humans looked for flint that was translucent and smooth because it could be easily shaped into sharp edges. This suggests a level of sophistication in recognizing the best materials for specific tools.

Testing the rocks’ qualities

To investigate, the team used two devices: a Schmidt Hammer and a Rockwell Hardness Device.

The Schmidt Hammer measures how a material rebounds after being struck, indicating its hardness. The Rockwell device presses a diamond point into the rock to test its strength.

Initially, as expected, they found that fine-grained flint required less force to fracture than medium-grained flint.

This made it more attractive for producing smaller tools. In fact, many stone tools from the Early Upper Paleolithic period, around 40,000 to 30,000 years ago, were made from fine-grained flint.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

An earlier study by the same team revealed that during the Late Middle Paleolithic and the Initial Upper Paleolithic periods, from 70,000 to 40,000 years ago, medium-grained flint was more commonly used for tools.

So, if fine-grained flint was easier to work with, why did our ancestors sometimes opt for the tougher medium-grained variety?

Tools were carefully chosen by early humans

Digging deeper, the researchers discovered that much of the fine-grained flint in the area had internal fractures caused by geological activities.

These fractures made the flint unsuitable for larger tools, like Levallois products and robust blades.

Therefore, even though medium-grained flint was harder to modify, it was more durable for making larger tools.

This indicates that Paleolithic humans made deliberate choices based on the intended use of the tool, balancing ease of crafting with durability.

“This study illustrates that the Paleolithic humans changed their choice of raw material to suit their stone tool morphologies and production techniques,” Suga explained.

“We believe that these prehistoric humans had a sensory understanding of the characteristics of the rocks and intentionally selected the stone material to be used according to the form and production technique of the desired stone tools.”

Much smarter than we thought back then

This research offers a window into the thoughtful decision-making of our ancestors.

They weren’t just using what was readily available; they were assessing the qualities of different materials and selecting the best one for the job.

“This intentional selection of the lithic raw material may have been an important component of the production of stone tools,” Suga said.

“This may show some aspect of flexible technological behavior adapted to the situation.”

Their ability to adapt and make these choices reflects a level of technological and cognitive sophistication that adds depth to our understanding of human evolution.

Why does any of this matter?

There are still many questions about how and why Homo sapiens expanded their reach between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago.

While ancient DNA has shown that modern humans interacted and interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans, it doesn’t tell us the whole story.

“If we want to know what happened that allowed Homo sapiens to thrive, we need to study cultural remains, such as stone tools, excavated from archaeological sites,” Suga pointed out.

“This kind of resource use is an important record for elucidating the evolution of human technological behavior, environmental adaptation, and the process of population growth at that time.”

By examining these tools and the materials chosen to make them, researchers can piece together how early humans adapted to their environments and what strategies they used to survive and flourish.

Humans, tools, and early evolution

To sum it all up, this study emphasizes the importance of archaeology in understanding human history.

The choices made by Paleolithic humans in selecting their materials reveal a level of ingenuity and adaptability that has been a hallmark of our species.

As we continue to explore and discover more about our ancestors, each finding adds a new piece to the puzzle of human evolution.

It’s a reminder of the complex journey that has led us to where we are today and the innate curiosity and problem-solving skills that have always been part of human nature.