{"id":239486,"date":"2026-06-23T10:04:48","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T15:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/scientists-open-a-million-year-old-time-capsule-hidden-beneath-new-zealand"},"modified":"2026-06-23T10:04:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T15:04:48","slug":"scientists-open-a-million-year-old-time-capsule-hidden-beneath-new-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/scientists-open-a-million-year-old-time-capsule-hidden-beneath-new-zealand","title":{"rendered":"Scientists open a million-year-old time capsule hidden beneath New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-open-a-million-year-old-time-capsule-hidden-beneath-new-zealand.webp\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A cave in New Zealand has yielded fossils from a lost ecosystem that existed about 1 million years ago, including a possible flying ancestor of the k\u0101k\u0101p\u014d. The discovery reveals that volcanoes and climate upheaval were reshaping the country\u2019s wildlife and driving extinctions long before humans arrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A cave in New Zealand has yielded fossils from a lost ecosystem that existed about 1 million years ago, including a possible flying ancestor of the k\u0101k\u0101p\u014d. The discovery reveals that volcanoes and climate upheaval were reshaping the country\u2019s wildlife and driving extinctions long before humans arrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}