Baltica data makes it difficult to locate the margin in the Arctic. Ordovician faunas indicate that most of Svalbard, including Bjørnøya, was part of Laurentia, but Franz Josef Land and Kvitøya (an eastern island of the Svalbard archipelago) most likely became part of Baltica in the Timanide Orogeny. The Taymyr Peninsula, in contrast, never was part of Baltica: southern Taymyr was part of Siberia whilst northern Taymyr and the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago were part of the independent Kara Terrane in the early Palaeozoic. The eastern margin, the Uralide orogen, extends from the Arctic Novaya Zemlya archipelago to the Aral Sea. The
Retreat of glaciers since 1850 1977 and 1995. In the Novaya Zemlya archipelago north of Russia, research indicates that in 1952 there was of glacier ice along the coast. By 1993 this had been reduced by 8% to of glacier coastline. In Greenland, glacier retreat has been observed in outlet glaciers, resulting in an increase of the ice flow rate and destabilization of the mass balance of the ice sheet that is their source. The net loss in volume and hence sea level contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) has doubled in recent years from per year in 1996 to per year in 2005.