58 
Russian scientists say they’ve revived a plant that had been tucked away by an arctic ground squirrel 32,000 years ago on the tundra of northeastern Siberia.
A few years ago, the scientists found the burrow stash and tried to germinate the long-frozen plant. That didn’t work. So they took cells from the plant’s placenta, the organ that produces seeds. After thawing out the cells, the scientists grew them into 36 “narrow-leafed campion” plants (similar to the one above). If the age for the plants’ DNA stands up to further scrutiny, they will be the oldest plants ever regrown from ancient tissue.
According to The New York Times, squirrels dug the burrows on the bank of the lower Kolyma River, where mammoth and woolly rhinoceroses roamed during the last ice age. The burrows were soon buried under 125 feet of sediment and frozen at minus 7 degrees Celsius. Upon excavation, scientists found more than 600,000 seeds and fruits in the ancient storage compartments.
Other, similar claims have been made before, so the scientific community will be skeptical and want more proof that the plants actually came from ancient DNA, and not from a more modern version of the plant. But the researchers who performed the work, Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences research center, said they have solid radiocarbon evidence that the seeds are 31,800 years old. They said special conditions may have helped preserve the plant: The placenta contains high levels of sucrose and phenols, which act like antifreeze. Also, over the years the plant’s fruit accumulated very little gamma radiation, which can damage DNA.
Tragically, Dr. Gilichinsky, the leader of the research team, suffered a fatal heart attack on Saturday. So Dr. Yashina and her colleagues are left to defend their work on their own. The work will be published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [The New York Times]
Image: Shutterstock/Le Do
A plant frozen to be kept away from the reach of the wildlife of the planet. Now it is free and shall begin to make some plant based zombies out of the humans in contact with it.
It’s nice to see the human race bringing something back to life rather than destroying everything that nature has to offer..
99.9% of species are extinct, and we could only be judged to responsible for smallest fraction of a fraction of that. Contrary to what you say, we are the only animals that actively preserves wildlife. We also farm, animals and plants exist purely because of our intervention by interbreeding new strains that wouldn’t otherwise have a reason to be. Look at all domesticated chickens, cows, sheep, pigs, horses, dogs, etc, and then hybrid plants, flowers, fruit, veg, etc – in 40,000 we are making God and Mother Nature look like a pair of stupid clowns, I don’t see them setting up national parks or breeding a wolf to be docile, amateurs. And we are just getting started here. It is easy to dwell on some bad press, but I think we deserve some respect. We have done things that are greater than anything we know of on this planet and beyond, and I think that is kinda special. I’d take the works of Van Gogh, the architecture of a great city or the computer over a stupid dead Dodo any day of the week. It is nothing in a long line of animals, like all animals, that sooner or later is no more. But we are here, we are great and we have legacy – beat that Dodo.
You can say what you want about god and nature but remember it wasn’t man that made the world we live in!
Man is greedy and selfish! Look at what we have in the western world, all the technology that we desire everything in easy reach. Man landed on the moon 43 years ago yet so many continue to live in poverty in the 3rd world still today. 43 years later basic worldly problems still unresolved, clean water and sanitation still not for everyone. Man is too busy making bombs and chasing earth’s riches to care about what’s really important. Look at Fukishma, a man made catasrophe. Although i agree man has done some good, i don’t think its enough and one day man will destroy what god and nature built.
“You can say what you want about god and nature but remember it wasn’t man that made the world we live in!”
True, but the world wasn’t created by God or nature also, as nature is of this world and God is only as old as our imagination.
We are an aggressive selfish ape that has randomly evolved on this planet, and within that definition we are doing very well, surprisingly so. At present our understanding is beginning to match our past foolishness, the fact that we talk and discuss unresolved issues is the very notion of our enlightenment. While you praise the alleged return of an extinct plant we have idiots that ban GM foods aimed to feed the poor, which is better?
We will never destroy this planet, we have raped it and will still further change and alter it, and maybe extinct ourselves but the planet is bigger than us. The next 200-300 years of the human’s span is deeply important, we may wane, we may die, but if not we will surpass those small little Gods on every conceivably level.
Uh, humans are responsible for the dodo’s extinction. They didn’t just die, humans ate them…
I mention the Dodo as it is one of the few animals we are responsible for making extinct out of the millions of extinct animals. Humans didn’t eat them, they were not very tasty. But the Dodo evolved to be fearless and flightless, surely in needs to take some responsibility for getting in trouble. If a tiger hunts and preys on a large bird and wipes them out we see that as nature, if a human does it we see that as wrong, why is that? yet like I’ve said we have created far more animals on this planet than we have destroyed, no other life form is doing that.