根据一个浓郁的绿色森林，在5600万年前的加拿大高北极地区的埃尔斯米尔和阿克塞尔海伯岛上生长new study发表在期刊上古射线图Abteilung b。
Dr. West hunts for fossils using a rock hammer to split apart shale on Ellesmere Island. Image credit: Markus Sudermann.
“It’s very surprising how similar these ancient polar forests were to some of our modern forests,” said Dr. Christopher West, a paleobotanist in the Departnmet of Geological Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan and the corresponding author of the study.
“We identified fossil plants related to many modern temperate trees: birch, alder, elms — even plants belonging to the grape family. Some of the fossils are related to trees now found only in East Asia.”
“The presence of these forests gives us an idea about what could happen over long periods of time if our modern climate continues to warm, and also how forest ecosystems responded to greenhouse climates in the distant past.”
在研究中，韦斯特博士及其同事，萨斯喀彻温大学的吉姆·贝辛格（Jim Basinger）博士和布兰登大学的戴维·格林伍德（David Greenwood）博士创建了一个全面的化石植物目录，这些化石植物来自Ellesmere和Axel Heiberg Islands的多个地区。
They identified and described 83 types of plants: 62 ‘dicot’ angiosperms, three monocotyledonous angiosperms, 13 gymnosperms, and five pteridophytes.
研究人员说：“虽然在始新世的早期，地球的温度要高得多，但大陆大部分位于现在的位置，而北部的纬度本来会有很长的黑暗时期。”
“尽管几乎完全缺乏光线，但森林仍然存在，这可能是因为它的温暖程度。”
“We won’t see a return to a forested polar region in our lifetimes, but it is important to remember that we as humans have become agents of climate change, and that our warming climate will have potentially dramatic effects on our modern ecosystems,” Dr. West said.
“If we are able to understand how ecosystems long ago responded to global warming, we may be able to better predict how our own modern ecosystems will respond to our own rapidly warming climate.”
“这项研究还将帮助气候建模者使用过去的数据来更好地了解我们自己的气候。”
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Christopher K. Westet al。2019年。加拿大努纳武特的Ellesmere和Axel Heiberg Islands的早期始新世至始新世早期的北极北极。古射线图Abteilung b300 (1-6): 47-163; doi: 10.1127/palb/2019/0066
