The Kap Kobenhavn Formation, located in Peary Land, northern Greenland, is a polar desert. The climate in the region is believed to have been much warmer around 2 million years ago, when temperatures may have been up to 19 degrees Celsius warmer than today, but little is known about the biological communities that would have lived there at that time, since vertebrate fossils are so rare. By extracting and sequencing DNA from 41 sediment samples rich in organic matter collected from five different locations in Kap Kobenhavn, a group led by Danish geneticist Eske Willerslev of the University of Cambridge, UK, was able to reconstitute the ancient ecosystem. Two million years ago, what is now an icy desert may have been an open boreal forest, with a range of vegetation including poplar, birch, and thuja trees, inhabited by mastodons, reindeer, and geese (Nature, December 7). No current ecosystem can be compared.
RepublishPaleontology
A boreal forest from the past
Artist's reconstruction of the boreal forest that may have existed 2 million years ago
Beth Zaiken
