Scientists identify DNA from animals, plants and microbes dating to about 2 million years ago — the oldest on record by far — from sediment at Greenland's northernmost point, revealing an amazing lost world at the remote frontier
A two million-year-old trunk from a larch tree, still stuck in the permafrost within coastal deposits at the northern tip of Greenland.
They found the DNA fragments in sediment from the northernmost part of Greenland known as Kap Copenhagen, said the University of Copenhagen lecturer. DNA is the self-replicating material carrying genetic information in living organisms — sort of a blueprint of life. Then, at some point around two million years ago, "this land mass beneath the water was raised up and became a part of North Greenland", he explained.
The research team, which began its work in 2006, has now made it possible to paint a picture of what the region looked like two million years ago."We had this forested environment with mastodons and reindeer and hares running around in the landscape together with a lot of different plant species", he said, they had found 102 different kinds of plant.
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