Greenland was once as green as its name, oldest DNA discovery reveals

Greenland was once home to the forests of poplar and birch trees with its edges housing warm coastal waters filled with crabs and aquatic diversity, the world's oldest DNA discovery to daterevealed.

The study said that theecosystem reconstructed from DNA discovery has "no modern analogue".

The genetic material dates back to at least two million years ago, nearly twice as old as the previously known oldest DNA discovered in Siberia.

The finding was published in the Nature journal, offering an extraordinary look at an extraordinary ancient ecosystem.

Together, they show that a region just 600 miles from the North Pole was also home to caribou and Arctic hares. Whereas the warm coastal waters were filled with horseshoe crabs, a species that today cannot be found any farther north of Maine.

Independent experts have hailed the study as a major advance.

"You not only see DNA from a single organism, it's in fact DNA from an entire ecosystem," Professor Willerslev of the University of Cambridge told ABC News.

“It feels almost magical to be able to infer such a complete picture of an ancient ecosystem from tiny fragments of preserved DNA,” Beth Shapiro, a paleogeneticist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was quoted as saying by New York Times.

Far from its one green past, Greenland at present receives next to no rainfall and supports very little life apart from mosses, lichens and the occasional Arctic hare or musk ox scrabbling on the bare slopes.

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