Four centuries of commercial whaling eroded 11,000 years of population stability in bowhead whales

Bowhead whales were heavily exploited during commercial whaling between the 16th and 20th centuries. Current and near-future climate warming poses a new threat. Assessing bowhead vulnerability to climatic change remains challenging due to insufficient knowledge regarding responses to past climates and pre-whaling population dynamics. We integrate paleogenomics and stable isotopes (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) from 206 bowhead fossils from the Atlantic Arctic with paleoclimate and ecologi