2-million-year-old DNA reveals an ancient Greenland ecosystem "unlike any now found on Earth" - CBS News

Melting arctic crystal explored successful documentary

Melting arctic crystal successful Greenland explored successful documentary 15:15

North Greenland is known for being "the onshore of the midnight prima and canine sledding" arsenic a polar godforsaken with monolithic icebergs. But that wasn't ever the lawsuit – 2 cardinal years ago, it was "a forested ecosystem dissimilar immoderate present recovered connected Earth." 

A historical and "extraordinary" uncovering and a new study published successful Nature this week uncover conscionable however overmuch the icy scenery has changed. Researchers recovered 2-million-year-old DNA – the oldest ever discovered – buried successful clay and quartz sediment that was preserved successful permafrost successful Greenland's northernmost point. 

"A caller section spanning 1 cardinal other years of past has yet been opened and for the archetypal clip we tin look straight astatine the DNA of a past ecosystem that acold backmost successful time," 1 of the researchers, Eske Willerslev from the University of Cambridge, said successful a press release. "DNA tin degrade rapidly but we've shown that nether the close circumstances, we tin present spell backmost further successful clip than anyone could person dared imagine." 

Geographical determination and depositional series of the Greenland findings.  Nature

Willerslev, on with Kurt H. Kjær from the University of Copenhagen, uncovered 41 samples, each lone a fewer millionths of a millimeter long, but with an invaluable magnitude of information. Those tiny samples revealed that the freezing portion was erstwhile the past location for galore more animals, plants and microorganisms than are determination today, including hares and lemmings.  

One of the astir astonishing discoveries, however, were traces of animals that were thought to person ne'er been successful the state astatine each – reindeer and mastodons. The country wherever the DNA was recovered is usually lone known for minimal plants, hare and musk ox, according to Nature.

"Reindeers, according to paleontologists, should not person survived," Willerslev told Nature of the animal, which live wild successful the country's west. "They shouldn't adjacent beryllium astatine that time."

Illustration of a mastodon / Getty Images

Mastodons, according to the San Diego Natural History Museum, were monolithic Ice Age mammals that are akin successful size and characteristics to the modern-day elephant. The animals, which went extinct 13,000 years ago, were thought to unrecorded mostly crossed North and Central America. 

Researchers besides recovered grounds that today's comparatively bare situation was erstwhile a "forested ecosystem dissimilar immoderate present recovered connected Earth," according to Nature, filled with poplar, spruce and yew trees that don't typically turn that acold north. 

"No 1 would person predicted this ecosystem successful bluish Greenland astatine this time," Willerslev said.

Additional findings of horseshoe crab and greenish algae enactment the scientists' content that the bluish Greenland clime 2 cardinal years agone was warmer than it is today. 

As unthinkable arsenic their findings were, researchers are conscionable arsenic excited astir what it could mean successful aboriginal studies that utilize past DNA. 

"Similar elaborate flora and vertebrate DNA records whitethorn past astatine different localities," the survey says. "If recovered, these would beforehand our knowing of the variability of clime and biotic interactions during the warmer Early Pleistocene epochs crossed the High Arctic."

In:
• elephant
• DNA
• Denmark