Fossil DNA illuminates the life and climate of the past

Ancient Greenland was green. New Danish research has shown that it was covered in conifer forest and had a relatively mild climate. Professor Eske Willerslev has analysed the world’s oldest DNA, preserved under the kilometre-thick icecap. The DNA is likely close to half a million years old, and the research results are overturning all previous assumptions about biological life and the climate in Greenland.