Researchers of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, in collaboration with colleagues from different Italian institutions, have uncovered evidence that strandings of different cetacean species increased in the Mediterranean as a result of environmental changes linked to the rapid climate change that took place around 8,200 years ago. The findings imply that abrupt climate change, of similar entity as worst-case scenarios for global warming, dramatically affects strandings and may represent a serious threat for cetaceans in the next few decades.