Two million years ago, on the fringe of some of the northernmost land on Earth just 500 miles from the North Pole, the landscape couldn’t have looked more different from today’s polar desert.

Werewolves also turn up in Greek mythology with the legend of Lycaon who was turned into a wolf when he angered the god Zeus. (Did a "werewolf" really terrorize France in the 1700s?) In the 1760s ...