A 4.5‑m dirt core at the bottom of the Camp Century ice core in northwest Greenland yielded twigs, probably from spruce or fir trees, and leaves with inferred warmer temperatures. The core had been ‘lost’ for decades until found in a freezer in 2017. Scientists were stunned.

Lead researcher Andrew Christ said, “Ice sheets typically pulverize and destroy everything in their path, but what we discovered was delicate plant structures—perfectly preserved. They’re fossils, but they look like they died yesterday.”

©123rf.com/Dmytro Pylypenko

Based on their long-age assumptions, climate scientists thought the ice should have con­tin­ued over the area for at least 2.6 million years. However, the ve­get­a­tion in­dic­ates that the ice sheet had melted much sooner—within the past one million years (in their thinking).

However, this sort of evidence is no surprise but expected by the biblical Ice Age model. In that model, at the beginning of the Ice Age, warm oceans surrounded Greenland after Noah’s Flood, just 4,500 years ago. Northwest Greenland would not have been glaciated until about 200 years later, allowing ample time for the vegetation to grow in a relatively warm climate.

• Christ, A.J. and 17 others, A multimillion-year-old record of Greenland vegetation and glacial history preserved in sediment beneath 1.4 km of ice at Camp Century, PNAS 118(13):1–8, 2021.
• Scientists stunned to discover plants beneath mile-deep Greenland ice, sciencedaily.com, 15 Mar 2021.
• Oard, M.J., Ice core oscillations and abrupt climate changes: part 1—Greenland ice cores, J. Creation 34(3):99–108, 2020.