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LiveScience
LiveScience
James Bonthron

Fossils from Greenland's icy heart reveal it was a green tundra covered in flowers less than 1 million years ago

Aerial view of the Russell Glacier near Kangerlussuaq at sunset, front view the top of the glacier.

Today, nearly 98% of Greenland is covered in ice — but new research suggests it was virtually ice-free less than a million years ago.

Over the years, opinion has shifted about whether Greenland has been continuously covered by ice since the start of the Pleistocene epoch, roughly 2.7 million years ago. But a new fossil discovery, described in a study published Aug. 5 in the journal PNAS, "provides the first direct evidence that the center — not just the edges — of Greenland's ice sheet melted away in the recent geological past," according to a statement from the University of Vermont.,

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