A few months ago I saw a study of glaciers in South America (perhaps
in the Peruvian Andes).  Part of the report mentioned that they
uncovered a plant that was buried under ice for thousands of years. 
The plant was still green.  The implication was that it had started
snowing one day and never let up long enough to expose the plant
again.  The upshot was that this was evidence for rapid climate
change.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to remember where I saw that article.  I
need a link to a site with information on this.

Hi anrwlias!!

I am not sure if one of the following articles is the one that you
have read, but they talk about the event that you mentioned.

"ICE CORES MAY YIELD CLUES TO 5,000-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY":
"...Something happened 5,200 years ago that was abrupt and very large-scale...
...In 2002, Thompsons team made a surprising find along the margin of
the Quelccaya ice cap a remarkably preserved wetland plant that had
been remarkably preserved under the ice. Later testing yielded viable
DNA from the plant and dated it back 5,200 years ago.
This is a soft-bodied plant, he said. It had to be captured by a very
large snowfall at the time, a snowfall and climate change that began
very abruptly fast enough to capture a plant but not kill it...."
This article can be found at the Ohio State Research News site:
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/quelcoro.htm


The following two articles from the Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country
site are related to the above article:
"Evidence Past Climate Change Happened in Hours":
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=3303

"Ice Man Evidence of Sudden Climate Change":
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=3322


I hope this helps you, if you need any clarification please request
for it before rate this answer.

Best regards.
livioflores-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by livioflores-ga on 24 May 2004 05:57 PDT

I forgot to give you my search strategy:

Keywords:
glacier buried plant peru climate

Search engine:
www.google.com

Results page:
://www.google.com/search?q=glacier+buried+plant+peru+climate&num=20&hl=es&lr=&ie=UTF-8&newwindow=1&c2coff=1&start=0&sa=N

Regards.
livioflores-ga

In spite of giving a fairly vague description of the article I was
looking for,the researcher found the specific article I was looking
for withing 24 hours of posting it.  Excellent work!