Ever wondered why the biggest island on Earth is called Greenland although it is covered in think, multi-millennial layer of ice? It’s because it was actually green, as new findings suggest.

Sometime between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago the largest island on our planet had a territory where life thrived much like in today’s Scandinavian areas, according to scientists from University of Copenhagen, led by Eske Willerslev.

A boreal forest similar to the Canadian and Tunguska taiga covered the southernmost part of the island, hosting a handful of butterfly and beetle species. From the genetic material of the organisms found under the perennial ice researchers were able to deduce that Greenland’s temperature once varied from 50 degrees Fahrenheit in summer to 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit in winter, providing conditions for a temperate climate which trees love.

“We have shown for the first time that southern Greenland...was once very different to the Greenland we see today,” said study leader Eske Willerslev.

Besides the extraordinary advancement registered by the science of ancient DNA (which was able to “extract” detailed information about complex environments from more than 450,000 years ago), the study published in the latest issue of prestigious Science Magazine also evidences that in order to have such mild whether in the southern part of Greenland planetary ocean’s levels had to be between three and six feet higher compared to current levels.

“To get this site ice free you would’ve had to remove the ice cover from about the southern third of Greenland,” study team member Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta, Canada, told LiveScience.