JACKSON, Wyo. — On Dec. 20, 2024, new research was published that reveals scientists discovered more than 30 dead whitebark pine trees that were entombed in ice for millennia on the Beartooth Plateau in northwest Wyoming.
The groundbreaking discovery was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and can be found here. According to the research, the whitebark pines were lying down with “extraordinary quality of wood preservation.”
The authors of the peer-reviewed paper write that recent warming has decreased snow and ice cover of most subalpine treelines around the world, so that the whitebark pine trees have become visible after up to 5,900 years. This discovery provides insights into past climate change and ecosystem dynamics in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE)…