[Reading Science] Greenland, the 'Frozen Land', Was Once a Forest Where Elephants Roamed

Copenhagen University Research Team Discovers Ancient DNA in 2-Million-Year-Old Sedimentary Organic Matter

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] Greenland, now a frozen tundra, was a "lost world" covered with forests where reindeer and "ancestral elephants" roamed just 2 million years ago, according to a new study.

A paleontology research team from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark published a paper containing these findings on the 7th in the international journal Nature. The team collected organic samples from the Kap København Formation, located in Peary Land in northeastern Greenland, which is now a polar desert region. This formation consists of about 100 meters of frozen mud and sand deposits formed approximately 2 million years ago. They then extracted ancient DNA from these samples and conducted sequencing research.

The results yielded astonishing findings. DNA was discovered not only from trees currently native to Greenland, such as sedges, shrubs, and birch species, but also from poplar, spruce, and yew trees that grow in much warmer, lower-latitude regions. Additionally, DNA from rodents, geese, rabbits, as well as reindeer and mastodons?a type of extinct ancient elephant?was found. Paleontologists had never before found fossil evidence that reindeer or mastodons inhabited this area at that time. In other words, 2 million years ago, Greenland was home to a "lost world" that had never existed elsewhere on Earth.

Nature explained, "Scientists have discovered evidence of an open subarctic forest where Arctic species such as cedar, spruce, and birch coexisted with animals like rabbits, mastodons, reindeer, and geese." It added, "This evidence suggests that this region of Greenland, now a polar desert, was 11 to 17°C warmer than today and was the habitat of an ecosystem composition that no longer exists anywhere else in the world."