North Greenland is known as “the land of the midnight sun and dog sledding” as a polar desert with huge icebergs. But that hasn’t always been the case – 2 million years ago it was “a forest ecosystem unlike anything found on Earth today”.
A historic and “extraordinary” discovery and new study published in Nature this week reveal just how much the icy landscape has changed. Researchers have discovered 2-million-year-old DNA – the oldest ever found – buried in clay and quartz sediments that have been preserved in permafrost at the northernmost point of Greenland.
“A new chapter spanning an additional million years of history has finally been opened and for the first time we can look directly at the DNA of an ecosystem that has passed so far back in time,” said one of the researchers. , Eske Willerslev of the University of Cambridge. , said in a press release. “DNA can degrade quickly, but we’ve shown that under the right circumstances we can now go back further in time than anyone dared to imagine.”
Nature
Willerslev, together with Kurt H. Kjær from the University of Copenhagen, discovered 41 samples, each only a few millionths of a millimeter long, but with an invaluable amount of information. These tiny samples revealed that the freezing region was once the former home of many more animalsthe plants and micro-organisms there are today, including hares and lemmings.
One of the most startling discoveries, however, were tracks of animals that would never have been in the country at all – reindeer and mastodons. The area where the DNA was found is generally known only for minimal plants, hare and muskox, according to Nature.
“Reindeer, according to paleontologists, should not have survived,” Willerslev told Nature of the animal, which lives wild in the west of the country. “They shouldn’t even exist at this time.”
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Mastodons were massive Ice Age mammals similar in size and features to today’s elephant, according to the San Diego Museum of Natural History. The animals, which disappeared 13,000 years ago, were thought to live mainly in North and Central America.
The researchers also found evidence that today’s relatively empty environment was once a “forest ecosystem unlike anything currently found on Earth,” according to Nature, filled with poplars, spruces, and trees. yew trees which generally do not grow as far north.
“No one would have predicted this ecosystem in the north Greenland right now,” Willerslev said.
Additional findings of horseshoe crab and green algae support scientists’ belief that the climate of northern Greenland 2 million years ago was warmer than it is today.
As incredible as their findings are, the researchers are equally excited about what it could mean in future studies using ancient DNA.
“Similar and detailed flora and vertebrate DNA records may survive in other localities,” the study says. “If recovered, they would advance our understanding of the variability of climatic and biotic interactions during warmer Early Pleistocene epochs in the High Arctic.”
Li Cohen
