Scientists amazed by fossils found deep beneath Greenland ice cap

Looking at the back of your freezer, you might discover all kinds of goodies that you had probably forgotten, but probably nothing more surprising than a find made in the bottom of a freezer at the University of Copenhagen.

A 15-foot tube of Greenland ice and dirt, recovered in 1966 by a US military team that had drilled more than a mile through the ice, was first analyzed in 2019 – and there was much more than sand. and dirt in the samples.

In a study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the international team of researchers described the discovery of “perfectly preserved” twigs and leaves locked in their extracted ice cores. The existence of these plants implies that there was once vegetation in this now ice-buried location, showing that much of Greenland must have been ice-free over the past million years.

Scientist Andrew Christ reported that the samples are like a time capsule of Greenland before the ice. “Ice caps usually pulverize and destroy everything in their path,” he said, “but what we found are delicate plant structures. They are fossils, but they look like they died yesterday. . ”

The implications of this finding could be huge for climate change studies, given that analysis of the Greenland ice sheet could help scientists predict how it will behave when temperatures rise and ice melts due to human activity. It can also help them estimate how long it will take for the ice sheet to melt completely, affecting sea level around the world.

In addition, the discovery suggests that Greenland may be more vulnerable to human-induced climate change than initially thought, given that most of the ice sheet has melted at least once before in the history – and this without the help of man-made greenhouse gases and emissions.

Now that the levels are higher, the ice could melt faster and with more extreme results. The Greenland ice sheet contains enough water to raise the global sea level by 20 feet, which would have dire consequences for coastal populations when it melts.

Senior scientist Paul Bierman insisted on the need to immediately tackle the ice problem in Greenland. “It’s not a 20-generation problem,” he said. “This is an urgent problem for the next 50 years.”