Forested Arctic: evidence from North Greenland.

Shallow-water marine sediments of the Kap Kobenhavn Formation at lat 82°30'N, Perry Land, contain an abundance of well-preserved remains of terrestrial vegetation and invertebrate fauna indicative of a mosaic of forest tundra environments having similarities to present conditions in Labrador. The presence of foraminifera faunas, marine molluscs, and 1 mammal species (supported by studies of paleomagnetism and amino acid diagenesis) suggests an age of approx 2 Ma, at the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition. At this time, the arctic tree line was located 2500 km to the N of its present position in the NW Atlantic region, and forest tundra vegetation existed in lowland areas bordering on an Arctic Ocean without perennial sea-ice cover.