ANRV309-EA35-17 ARI 20 March 2007 16:33 The Arctic Forest of the Middle Eocene A. Hope Jahren Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218; email:
[email protected] Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 2007. 35:509–40 Key Words First published online as a Review in Advance on Metasequoia, Fossil Forest, paleoenvironment, paleosol, relative January 29, 2007 humidity, biomarker The Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences is online at earth.annualreviews.org Abstract This article’s doi: Lush forests, dominated by deciduous conifers, existed well north of 10.1146/annurev.earth.35.031306.140125 the Arctic Circle during the middle Eocene (∼45 Ma). The Fossil Copyright c 2007 by Annual Reviews. by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft on 08/01/07. For personal use only. Forest site, located on Axel Heiberg Island, Canada, has yielded a All rights reserved particularly rich assemblage of plant macro- and microfossils, as well 0084-6597/07/0530-0509$20.00 as paleosols—all exquisitely preserved. Methods ranging from clas- Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 2007.35:509-540. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org sical paleobotany, to stable-isotope geochemistry, have been applied to materials excavated from the Fossil Forest and have revealed layers of diverse conifer forests with a rich angiosperm understory that suc- cessfully endured three months of continuous light and three months of continuous darkness. Paleoenvironmental reconstructions suggest a warm, ice-free environment, with high growing-season-relative humidity, and high rates of soil methanogenesis. Methods to evalu- ate intraseasonal variability highlight the switchover from stored to actively fixed carbon during the short annual growing season.