Previously, scientists from the University of Tasmania in Australia dug up fragments of DNA in Antarctica dating back one million years ago (see BioNews 1163). Now, scientists from the University of Cambridge and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, have uncovered two-million-year-old DNA from northern Greenland.

The research is published in Nature.

Today the area is a polar desert, but the microscopic fragments of environmental DNA, extracted from soil, has uncovered evidence of animals, plants and microorganisms including reindeer, hares, lemmings, birch and poplar trees. The researchers also discovered that the Ice Age mammal, the Mastodon, also lived in Greenland before later becoming extinct.

The genetic samples were taken from a sediment deposit nearly 100 metres thick, which had built up metre by metre in a shallow bay. The climate in Greenland at the time varied between Arctic and temperate and was between 10-17C warmer than Greenland is today.

'A new chapter spanning one million extra years of history has finally been opened and for the first time we can look directly at the DNA of a past ecosystem that far back in time,' said Professor Eske Willerslev from the University of Cambridge.

Find out more from the University of Cambridge.