''' '' TELLS ARCTIC TESTS '' ''' : !WOW!

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AN ANCIENT - FORESTED ARCTIC with Mastodons in the woods and horseshoe crabs in warm, offshore waters.

In the permafrost at the northern edge of Greenland, scientists have discovered the oldest known fragments of DNA, offering an extraordinary look at an extraordinary ancient ecosystem.

The genetic material dates back at least two million years - nearly twice as far as the mammoth DNA in Siberia that held the previous record. And the samples, described last Wednesday in the journal Nature, came from more than 135 different species.

Together, they show that a region just 600 miles, or about 965 kilometers, from the North Pole was once covered by a forest of poplar and birch trees and inhabited by mastodons.

The forests were also home to caribou and the Arctic hares. And the warm coastal waters were filled with horseshoe crabs, a species that today cannot be found any farther north than Maine.

Independent experts called the study a major advance. ''It feels  almost magical to be able to infer such a complete picture of an ancient ecosystem from tiny fragments of preserved DNA,'' said Beth Shapiro, a paleogeneticist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

''I think it's going to blow people's minds,'' said Andrew Christ, a geoscientist at the University of Vermont who studies the ancient Arctic. ''It certainly did so for me.''

The discovery came after two decades of scientific gambles and frustrating setbacks. One of the leaders of the project, Eske Willerslev, pioneered methods for pulling DNA out of sediment while he was a graduate student at the University of Copenhagen.

In 2003, studying a chunk of Siberian permafrost, he and his colleagues found DNA from plants such as willow and daisies dating back 400,000 years.

That discovery set a record at the time for the oldest DNA, and many scientists doubted it would be possible to find anything much older. But in 2006, Dr. Willerslev and Kurt Kjaer, a geoscientist at the University of Copenhagen, tried to defy the odds in northern Greenland.

They made their way to a geological formation called Kap Kobenhavn, a series of bare hills as desolate as a moonscape. Previously, scientists had found plant fossils there that they estimated to be 2.4 million years old. Finding DNA in the sediments would have been astonishing.

''If you want to move things forward, you need to take some leaps,'' Dr. Kjaer said. The researchers dug up permafrost and took it back to Copenhagen to search for DNA. They failed to find any.

In later years, Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues had more success when they examined younger sediments and bones from other parts of the world. They discovered a wealth of ancient human DNA that has helped reshape our understanding of our species' history.

The researchers were surprised by some of the species they found. Caribou live today in Greenland, as they do across much of the Arctic. But until now, their fossil record suggested they evolved a million years ago. Their DNA now doubles their evolutionary history.

Love Dalen, a paleogeneticist from Stockholm University who last year discovered mammoth DNA in Siberia that was 1.2 million years old, marveled that mastodons had turned up in Greenland. ''What the hell are they doing up there?'' he asked.

Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues are continuing to study the DNA for clues to how all these species were able to thrive a thousand miles north of the Arctic Circle. The trees, for example, had to survive half the year in darkness. The DNA preserved for two million years may hold their secrets of adaptation.

The scientists are also interested in how the DNA fragments managed to survive so long and defy expectations. Their research indicates that the DNA molecules can cling to minerals of feldspar and clay, which protect them from further damage.

Based on that discovery, the researchers are developing new methods that they hope will let them pull even more DNA out of the ancient sediments. Dr. Kjaer and his colleagues are scouting four-million-year-old sites in Canada with the hope of breaking their own record.

Dr. Dalen said that they might succeed. But the damage that both he and the Danish researchers are finding in the oldest DNA suggests to him that it will be impossible to find ancient genetic material older than about five million years.

''This in no way suggests that there will be any DNA coming out of dinosaur-aged fossils,'' he said.

Dr. Christ said that finding more DNA may help them better understand how human-driven climate change will alter the Arctic. We should not assume, he said, that the region will resemble ecosystems in places farther south. After all, the ecosystem of Kap Kobenhaven two million years ago has no analog today.

''Life will adapt, but in ways we don't expect,'' Dr. Christ said.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on ancient Arctic, and DNA sciences and advances, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Carl Zimmer.

With respectful dedication to the Scientists, Researchers, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society  -the exclusive ownership of every student in the world : wssciw.blogspot.com   and....... Twitter !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

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