Newly discovered island is the closest land to the North Pole

The newly discovered island is extremely small, and will likely not be around for a long time. (Image credit: Morten Rasch)

In July, a group of scientists accidentally found themselves on a tiny island in northern Greenland made up of mounds of silt and gravel.

The expeditioners thought they had traveled to the island of Oodaaq, the northernmost island in Greenland — but they were really standing on a previously unknown island that was even further north, likely making it the closest piece of land to the North Pole.

"We were convinced that we were standing on Oodaaq Island, which until then had been registered as the world's northernmost island," expedition leader Morten Rasch, a senior consultant at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, said in a statement.

"But when I posted photos and the island's coordinates on social media, a number of American island hunters went crazy and said that it couldn't be true." (Island hunters, as their name suggests, seek to discover unknown islands for fun).

Following these social media comments, the group contacted an expert at the Technical University of Denmark, and realized that Rasch's GPS had made a mistake. Using the GPS on their helicopter, Rasch's group confirmed that they were indeed on a new island, which they say is now the northernmost island on the planet. If they found Santa, no one mentioned it.