Greenland hardly seems like the kind of place for amphibians and reptiles to live. After all, cold-blooded animals generally do not do well in freezing polar climates. Yet, as Science Nordic notes, amphibian and reptile fossils have been found all over Greenland hidden beneath the ice. So how is this possible?
210 million years ago, the world looked very different from today. Instead of the seven continents, the world’s landmass was agglomerated into a single supercontinent called Pangaea. Greenland, as part of the supercontinent, was located much further south near the equator and was, as expected, much warmer. In fact, according to Danish scientist Jesper Milan, it was a “subtropical paradise,” filled with warm lakes, floodplains, and rivers that made ideal breeding and feeding grounds for amphibian and reptile life.
Well after the break-up of Pangaea, the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum sent global temperatures spiking as much as 8°C. Thus, as CU Boulder notes, the warmer climate transformed the Arctic (including parts of Greenland) into regions hospitable for reptile and amphibian life. Parts of Greenland resembled the swamps of the Southeastern United States, allowing crocodiles, tortoises, and aquatic turtles to thrive in a very different kind of place than what we see today.
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Publish date : 2022-02-25 03:00:00
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