Swedish quaternary geologists from Lund University participated in a German research expedition to the island Store Koldewey in northeast Greenland. The researchers collected sediment samples, which can contain information on vegetation and climate development during the ice age.
Samples of glacially transported blocks were also collected in the field and dated by cosmogenic exposure methodology. It was previously thought that they were the remains of moraines from the Saale Ice Age 150,000 years ago, but new findings indicate that they can be more than 1 million years old.
At Store Koldewey researchers studied also glacial/glaciomarine sediment sequences discovered in 1906/07, but previously never examined with modern techniques.
Principal investigator
Christian Hjort
Lund University