A paper co-written by P. Thompson Davis, professor of geology and paleoclimatology in the Natural and Applied Sciences Department, was the most cited article in Quaternary Research (Volume 65, Issue 1, 2006) between 2005 and 2010.

The research, "Preservation of Arctic landscapes Overridden by Cold-Based Ice Sheets," demonstrates that the Arctic Canadian region was covered by minimally erosive, cold-based ice during the late Wisconsinan, suggesting that surficial features commonly used to define the pattern of late Wisconsinan ice movement cannot be used on their own to constrain late Wisconsinan ice-sheet margins in Arctic regions.

The research was funded by two collaborative National Science Foundation (NSF) grants to Bentley and the University of Colorado. Between 2001 to 2003 and in 2005, Davis spent approximately 10 weeks in the field on four expeditions with University of Colorado co-principle investigator Gifford Miller and PhD student Jason Briner, along with numerous field assistants, including two Bentley undergraduate students. Five peer-reviewed journal articles related to this NSF-funded research on northern Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic have been published, three of which form a body of work that earned Davis a Bentley Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Award in 2008.