Name: Why Are There Stone Tree Trunks in the Arctic?
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Ellesmere Island, high in the Canadian Arctic, is only 800 miles from the North Pole. 50-million years ago, the treeless hillside would have been completely different.

Fifty-million years ago these rocks were trees and this Arctic tundra was a steamy swap.

Why Are There Stone Tree Trunks in the Arctic?

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Ellesmere Island, high in the Canadian Arctic, is only 800 miles from the North Pole. 50-million years ago, the treeless hillside would have been completely different.

Fifty-million years ago these rocks were trees and this Arctic tundra was a steamy swap.

Nature

Why Are There Stone Tree Trunks in the Arctic?Published: July 7, 2025KIRK JOHNSON: This frozen tundra may look barren, but for me as a paleobotanist, this is geologic heaven. There are a few small arctic wildflowers and some scrappy ground cover, but the nearest living tree is a thousand miles south of here. Finally, we reach what I've been looking for.Wow. Oh my God, there are some amazing stumps here. Look at this.Sticking out of the hillside are a bunch of weird brown rocks. These are petrified tree stumps. Geologists have dated these trees to around 50 million years ago. Back then, this treeless hillside would have been completely different.There's a lot of clues here to how this forest got to be the way it is. The first is that all these stone trunks are surrounded by coal, black rock, which is a very strong signal that these trees when they were growing were growing in a swamp. The second clue are these radiating roots. In swamps, roots grow out and not down.But what kind of trees were these?These rocks are just chunky silt stones that are quite near the petrified forest, and I'm breaking them apart because I'm looking for Fossil leaves. If I can find the leaves that go with those trees, I can put that forest back together again. Come to papa.Now, here we go. You see through the close-up of that thing?KIRK JOHNSON: What have you got?KIRK JOHNSON: This is Metasequoia, little needles. It's the dawn redwood. It's this Conifer, and these whole sprigs will fall off as they've done here and land in the mud. This used to be mud. Now, it's a rock. That would go with those trunks, the petrified forest.Together, these leaves and tree trunks give us a window into the past. 50 million years ago, this dried, barren tundra was a warm, humid swamp covered with lotus plants, ferns, and Metasequoia trees that were as tall as 150 feet. The area covered in ice today was once a massive forest that stretched all the way up to the edge of the Arctic Ocean. Water ran off the land forming a surface layer of freshwater. Instead of sea ice, the North Pole was covered in subtropical floating ferns.

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