"University of Bern Professor Emeritus Christian Schlüchter says a 10,800 year old larch tree trunk found under glacier Alps means it had to be warmer 10,800 years ago than today.
In 2018 renowned Swiss geologist Christian Schlüchter received a tip from the local forester of the exciting find that had been revealed by the retreating Morteratsch glacier.
... this specimen was unusual in the sense it was some 2 meters long and included the rootstock. Moreover, it also was astonishingly intact, and even included some bark.
The unusual good condition of the larch tree trunk meant that it must not have been transported downward by the glacier, and thus not ground up in the process.
This means its resting location had to be very close to where it had originally grown.
... A tree in this condition must have stood in the immediate vicinity, otherwise the trunk would look different, Schlüchter says.”
According to Schlüchter, the original larch tree had lived 337 years before it died and the glacier buried it. Research shows that the larch started growing about 10,800 years ago ...
The finding tells us that there used to be forests where glaciers are found today, which means the “Morteratsch glacier was once much smaller than it is today,” reports the SRF. The region was obviously warmer than today.
... Christian Schlüchter is Professor emeritus for Quaternary Geology and Paleoclimatology at the University of Bern in Switzerland. He has authored/co-authored over 250 papers."