Genetic material collected from permafrost shows northern part of the island was once a lush forest, home to poplar trees and other surprising organisms.
The northern tip of Greenland was once home to mastodons, reindeer and lush forests, reveal 2-million-year-old DNA sequences.The northeastern tip of Greenland is a lonely, barren place, home to the odd hare and musk ox, and few plants. Two-million-year-old DNA sequences — the oldest ever obtained — recovered from frozen soil suggest that the region was once home to mastodons and reindeer that roamed a forested ecosystem unlike any now found on Earth.
In 2021, Dalén’s team obtained partial genomes from million-year-old mammoth remains from Siberia, shattering the record for ancient-DNA preservation. But Dalén and other scientists suspected that although DNA degrades into ever-shorter fragments over time, even older sequences could be recovered and interpreted — if the right samples could be found.
Over the years, Willerslev and his team periodically tested the Kap København sediment, as methods for extracting and sequencing ancient DNA improved. A couple of years ago, they got their first success. All told, they sifted through more than 16 billion DNA fragments — many from modern microorganisms that had contaminated the samples — to identify shards of authentic ancient DNA. “It’s a massive sequencing effort,” Willerslev says.
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