"Axel Heilberg Island:...Located within the Arctic Circle north of mainland Canada, a full 8/9ths of the way from the equator to the North Pole, the uninhabited Canadian island is far enough north to make Iceland look like a great spot for a winter getaway.... 45 million years ago Axel Heilberg, still as close to the North Pole as it is now, was covered in a forest of redwood-like trees known as metasequoias"

The trees have long been used as evidence of a pole shift, yet scientists are trying their best to find an alternative explanation:

Fact: Axel Heilberg spends four months of each year in continuous sunlight and four months of each year in continuous darkness. New scientific non-answer: “We don’t have plants that can survive under those conditions today, let alone forests...Jahren’s group is working to see if the isotope chemistry of the fossils can help them learn how the metasequoias’ metabolism compared to those of contemporary plants"

Fact: It's too cold for them to grow there New scientific non-answer: "Axel Heilberg’s forests probably received equatorial water and warmth from a prehistoric weather pattern unlike anything in existence today."

Fact: The fossils look recent New scientific non-answer: “Some of this stuff looks about like driftwood on the beach, but it’s 45 million years old,” Jahren says. “These fossils are chemically preserved at a level you usually would expect to see in something that’s only 1,000 years old.”