The Thulean Route Uncovered Iceland's Ancient Connection

A detailed scientific presentation on "The Biogeographic History of Iceland – The North Atlantic Land Bridge Revisited" based on a chapter from "Late Cainozoic Floras of Iceland, Topics in Geobiology 35." This video explores how plants, even those without long-distance dispersal mechanisms, likely colonized Iceland via the North Atlantic Land Bridge (NALB) during the Cainozoic era. The NALB, also known as the Thulean route, was a subaerial Greenland-Scotland Transverse Ridge. The video will delve into evidence from geology, paleontology, and phylogeography, including new paleobotanical data, to evaluate the NALB's history and its role in transatlantic plant migration during the Neogene. Key topics include the origin and subsidence history of the Greenland-Iceland, Iceland-Faeroe, Greenland-North American (Davis Strait), and Faeroe-Scotland parts of the NALB, as well as explanations for Cainozoic plant migration to Iceland through fossil and phylogeographic evidence. The presentation will feature bathymetric maps and dispersal mode charts to illustrate the findings

Sources :
The Biogeographic History of Iceland - The North Atlantic Land Bridge Revisited chapter 12
By Friðgeir Grímsson and Thomas Denk