A team of international researchers has collected the oldest ever recovered DNA samples and used them to show that Greenland was much warmer at some point during the last Ice Age than most people have believed. The ancient DNA was discovered at the bottom of a two kilometer thick ice sheet and came from the trees, plants and insects of a boreal forest estimated to be between 450.000 and 900.000 years old. Previously, the youngest evidence of a boreal forest in Greenland was from 2,4 million years ago.
Ancient DNA reveals Greenland’s warm past
Ancient Biomolecules from Deep Ice Cores Reveal a Forested Southern Greenland