A mummified birch leaf discovered on Ellesmere Island in Canada. Ohio State University researchers and their colleagues have discovered the remains of a mummified forest that lived on the island 2 to 8 million years ago, when the Arctic was cooling.
Photograph by: Joel Barker, Ohio State University
A research team probing a melting glacier near Canada's northernmost point of land has discovered a "mummified" forest that's at least two million years old, with "perfectly preserved" tree trunks, branches and leaves from a time when the Arctic was transforming from a temperate environment into the ecological ice box it's been for countless millenniums.
The present-day thaw at the north end of Ellesmere Island — another sign of the widespread warming now taking hold of Canada's polar frontier — has served up intact spruce and birch trees believed to have been buried in a landslide during the Neogene period of Earth history between two and eight million years ago.
The U.S. scientists studying the ancient forest, who say the liberation of the long-frozen relics will offer a unique window on a lost world, are also warning that pent-up carbon released from such sites across the Arctic could worsen the modern-day climate change being driven by human activity.
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2 comments:
These mummified trees are incontrivertable evidence that the climate changes, they are not evidence that CO2 is the cause. However, including AGW or CO2 questions into the research are a great way to generate funding.
thanks for your comments, I am not a supporter of AGW or CO2 as a 'cause' of climate change. I am a supporter of managing our emissions as a function of managing waste, period. There are many aspects of our time and space that would benefit from better managing waste in modern society. I like these stories as they tell a story beyond the bounds of imaginable time.
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