Publication Date:
2007-07-07
Description:
It is difficult to obtain fossil data from the 10% of Earth's terrestrial surface that is covered by thick glaciers and ice sheets, and hence, knowledge of the paleoenvironments of these regions has remained limited. We show that DNA and amino acids from buried organisms can be recovered from the basal sections of deep ice cores, enabling reconstructions of past flora and fauna. We show that high-altitude southern Greenland, currently lying below more than 2 kilometers of ice, was inhabited by a diverse array of conifer trees and insects within the past million years. The results provide direct evidence in support of a forested southern Greenland and suggest that many deep ice cores may contain genetic records of paleoenvironments in their basal sections.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2694912/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2694912/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Willerslev, Eske -- Cappellini, Enrico -- Boomsma, Wouter -- Nielsen, Rasmus -- Hebsgaard, Martin B -- Brand, Tina B -- Hofreiter, Michael -- Bunce, Michael -- Poinar, Hendrik N -- Dahl-Jensen, Dorthe -- Johnsen, Sigfus -- Steffensen, Jorgen Peder -- Bennike, Ole -- Schwenninger, Jean-Luc -- Nathan, Roger -- Armitage, Simon -- de Hoog, Cees-Jan -- Alfimov, Vasily -- Christl, Marcus -- Beer, Juerg -- Muscheler, Raimund -- Barker, Joel -- Sharp, Martin -- Penkman, Kirsty E H -- Haile, James -- Taberlet, Pierre -- Gilbert, M Thomas P -- Casoli, Antonella -- Campani, Elisa -- Collins, Matthew J -- 076905/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom -- Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2007 Jul 6;317(5834):111-4.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Centre for Ancient Genetics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. ewillerslev@bi.ku.dk〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17615355" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Amino Acids/*analysis/history/isolation & purification
;
Animals
;
Bayes Theorem
;
Climate
;
DNA/*analysis/history/isolation & purification
;
*Ecosystem
;
Fossils
;
Geography
;
Greenland
;
History, Ancient
;
Ice Cover/*chemistry
;
*Invertebrates/classification/genetics
;
*Plants/classification/genetics
;
Polymerase Chain Reaction
;
Time
;
*Trees
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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