Kind: captions
Language: en
50 million years ago the Arctic was a
much warmer and wetter place kind of
like a modern-day swamp we start to put
all of those pieces of evidence together
to form in our minds an image of what
the environment was like back then let's
drop ourselves in a swamp and were there
up to our knees in water and were
surrounded by trees towering overhead
the temperature would have been warm and
moist humid like a lovely summer day as
you approach winter you find that day
length is shortening but the temperature
doesn't get really cold and then the Sun
dips below of the horizon for the last
time and you're in the polar dark winter
and it's dark for three or four months
and during that dark phase all of the
trees have dropped their leaves and
they're just standing waiting not in a
frosty environment they're just waiting
the dark for spring spring comes and the
trees respond with an explosion of
growth and off you are to another lovely
rich growing season near the North Pole
50 million years ago animals like kur if
Adam lived in a much warmer world kur if
you donate green leafy plants and
flowers during sun-filled summers it was
even warm enough to support animals like
turtles
tapirs and alligators animal and tree
fossils found in the Canadian Arctic are
direct evidence that Earth has been
what's called a hothouse a world without
ice at the poles in fact if you look
back through deep time over the last
half a billion years these warm climates
were three times as common as cold
climates
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you