Known as the “Land of the Midnight Sun and Dogsledding,” northern Greenland is an arctic wilderness dotted with massive icebergs. But it wasn’t always like this: two million years ago it was “a forest ecosystem different from the one on Earth today”.
Historical and “surprising” discoveries ea New study A publication in Nature this week reveals how much the glacier landscape is changing. Researchers have found 2-million-year-old DNA — the oldest ever found — buried in deposits of clay and quartz preserved in permafrost in far northern Greenland.
“Finally, a new chapter has been opened covering a further million years of history and for the first time we can look directly at the DNA of such ancient ecosystems,” said one of the researchers, Eske Willerslev of the University of Cambridge, in a statement. . personal conference. “DNA can degrade rapidly but we’ve shown that, under the right conditions, we can now go back in time further than anyone could have imagined.”
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Willerslev, together with Kurt H. Kjær of the University of Copenhagen, found 41 specimens, each just a millionth of a millimeter, but with an invaluable amount of information. The small sample reveals that the frozen area was once home to many people More animalsand plants and microorganisms that exist today, including the hare and lemongrass.
However, one of the most shocking discoveries were traces of animals that, according to him, had never existed in the country: reindeer and industry. The areas where DNA has been found are generally known only to grouse, hares and musk alam.
Willerslev told the journal Nature of the Animal unilateral contract in the western part of the country. “They shouldn’t have been around then.”
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Second Mastodon San Diego Natural History MuseumThey were large mammals of the Pleistocene Epoch that were similar in size and characteristics to modern elephants. The animals that went extinct 13,000 years ago are thought to have lived mainly in North and Central America.
The researchers also found evidence that today’s relatively empty environment was once a “forest ecosystem unlike anything on Earth today,” according to Nature, filled with poplars, cypresses and yews that don’t normally grow further north.
“No one expected this ecosystem in the North green Earth Saat ini, kata Willerslev.
Additional finds of horseshoe crabs and green algae support scientists’ belief that northern Greenland’s climate was much warmer two million years ago than it is today.
As surprising as their findings are, the researchers are equally excited about what this will mean in future studies using ancient DNA.
“The same detailed DNA records for plants and vertebrates may survive elsewhere,” the study says. “If recovered, it will advance our understanding of climate variability and biotic interactions during the warmer early Pleistocene epochs across the high Arctic.”
