Spitsbergen (now known as Svalbard) is an island in the Arctic Ocean, just eleven degrees from the North Pole, to the north of Norway. It was uninhabited until the 1890s when a mining colony was established there. For almost six months of winter there is no sunlight, yet fossilised plants have been found there, including pines, firs, elms, swamp-cypress and water lilies. Regardless of climate change, these cannot grow anywhere without regular sunlight. At some time in the past, Spitsbergen must have been further away from the pole. Further evidence comes from Soviet archaeologists who have discovered prehistoric cave drawings of deer and whales, as well as axes fashioned from mammoth tusks.
Reef corals have been found deep within the Arctic Circle, on the islands of Ellesmere (Canada) and Spitsbergen. Under snow now, they must have originally grown in a tropical region. Coral requires a minimum temperature of 64° Fahrenheit to grow, which means either a tropical location, or somewhere outside the tropics where warm currents bring tropical waters into higher latitudes (Japan, South Africa, and Bermuda for example).
At the opposite pole, Antarctica, Ernest Shackleton found coal beds within 200 miles of the South Pole. The Byrd expedition of 1935 uncovered fossils that were later identified as tree ferns, as well as the footprint of a “mammallike reptile”. At both ends of the globe, places which are currently the coldest on earth, we find evidence of warmth equivalent to that of latitudes at least 30 degrees closer to the equator.