The Bering Strait was once a vast treeless plain connecting Asia and North America. This “land bridge”, known as Beringia, is a region of global significance. It is across this region that humans first came to the Americas. But even before that, the Beringian crossroads had been influencing the world, allowing animals like mammoths, bison and moose to reach the New World, and horses and camels to strike out into the Old World.

Ice age Beringia was home to a diverse, and yet unique, mix of strange and familiar animals. During the cold glacial times, icons like the woolly mammoth, steppe bison and scimitar cat roamed the treeless plains alongside caribou, muskox and grizzly bears. In still older times, where temperatures were similar to today, giant beavers, mastodons and camels browsed the interglacial forests. These animals and many more were found in Beringia.

In the great history of human migrations, Beringia has a starring role. It is through this “land bridge”, which connected Asia to North America, that people first set foot in the Americas. Exactly when this happened is still a heated scientific debate, but one thing we do know is that these intrepid First People, direct ancestors of our First Nations, were the first to colonize the New World.

While the Beringia Centre is perhaps best known for its skeletons and displays of extinct animals, in many ways it is the artwork that forms the heart of the centre. Without the beautiful artwork by a diverse set of local and international artists, the centre would not be able to bring to life, in such vivid detail, the forgotten world of Beringia.