Springtime in Greenland
Some excellent research on Greenland Ice Cores has yielded some interesting results. From
MS/NBC/LiveScience:
Ancient Greenland was actually green!
DNA analysis reveals ice-covered country was once home to butterflies
The oldest ever recovered DNA samples have been collected from under more than a mile of Greenland ice, and their analysis suggests the island was much warmer during the last Ice Age than previously thought.
The DNA is proof that sometime between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago, much of Greenland was especially green and covered in a boreal forest that was home to alder, spruce and pine trees, as well as insects such as butterflies and beetles.
From the genetic material of these organisms, the researchers infer that Greenland’s temperature once varied from 50 degrees Fahrenheit in summer to 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit in winter — the temperature range that the tree species prefer.
“We have shown for the first time that southern Greenland...was once very different to the Greenland we see today,” said study leader Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen.
And a wee bit about the science being used:
The findings, detailed in the July 6 issue of the journal Science, demonstrate how far the young field of ancient DNA research has come: scientists can now recreate an environment’s climate and ecology using only recovered DNA, without the need for fossils that might be absent or hard to reach.
“To go from dirty water to a forest full of insects is pretty amazing,” Matthew Collins, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of York who was not involved in the study, said in a related Science news article.
Greenland’s thick ice sheets served as a perfect, natural freezer for preserving the prehistoric DNA. Older genetic samples have been found, but none in such pristine condition as the new Greenland samples.
The Science article is here but you need to be a subscriber to read anything more than the Abstract:
Ancient Biomolecules from Deep Ice Cores Reveal a Forested Southern Greenland
Very clever idea, all of the organic materials have long since decayed but there are still bits of the DNA floating around in the ice. There is very little difference between a current Pine Tree's DNA (or butterflies and beetles) and the ones from 800,000 years ago so it is very easy to identify the fragments from the various species. The hardware has been around for long enough that it is within the financial reach of a modest lab and the results are bulletproof in terms of accuracy.
Very cool!
Posted by DaveH at July 7, 2007 6:09 PM