Ice Age Flower, 32,000 Years Old … It’s Alive, It Blooms!

Ice Age Flower Blooms after 32000 Years – photo by anemoneprojectors (Peter O)

Gosh and Wow!

Beautiful, isn’t it?

From American Live Wire, via, as usual, an ATS thread, we read…

Ice Age Flower Blooms after 32000 Years

Nature is a wondrous beauty as the ice age flower blooms after 32000 years of being non-existent.

According to Discover Magazine, Russian scientists announced that they had unearthed the fruit and brought tissue from it back to life. after the seeds were buried over 32000 years ago. The discovery was made in northwestern Siberia, where the winter team of Russian scientists found the seeds of the flower and regrew it. The plant breaks the previously held record of the oldest tissue to give life to healthy plants, which was previously held by the Israeli date palm seed.

In 1995, researchers studying and working with ancient soil composition in an exposed Siberian riverbank found 70 fossilized Ice Age squirrel burrows, some of which stored up to 800,000 seeds and fruits. With the help of the permafrost, the narrow-leafed campion plant tissue was preserved well enough for the team at the Russian Academy of Sciences to culture the cells to see if they would grow. The team, led by team leader Svetlana Yashina, were successful and re-created Siberian conditions in the lab and watched as the refrigerated tissue sprouted buds that developed into 36 flowering plants within weeks.

Wow, I say again. Finally something credible from out of Russia – and it’s pretty darn exciting.

OLD DNA A plant has been generated from the fruit of the narrow-leafed campion. It is the oldest plant by far to be grown from ancient tissue.

I am impressed by the seemingly short recovery and growing time, although do note that I am lacking in horticultural knowledge and skills. It makes you wonder what it was like back then, probably verdant and lush like we can only imagine. Then again they had #loads of really big bugs back then, so probably scary at times, maybe all the time, but you’d go in a heartbeat in a time machine, wouldn’t you?

Hell Yeah!

From the New York Times (nice article):

Dead for 32,000 Years, an Arctic Plant Is Revived

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: February 20, 2012

Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died 32,000 years ago, a team of Russian scientists reports. The fruit was stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow on the tundra of northeastern Siberia and lay permanently frozen until excavated by scientists a few years ago.

This would be the oldest plant by far that has ever been grown from ancient tissue. The present record is held by a date palm grown from a seed some 2,000 years old that was recovered from the ancient fortress of Masada in Israel.

Seeds and certain cells can last a long term under the right conditions, but many claims of extreme longevity have failed on closer examination, and biologists are likely to greet this claim, too, with reserve until it can be independently confirmed. Tales of wheat grown from seeds in the tombs of the pharaohs have long been discredited. Lupines were germinated from seeds in a 10,000-year-old lemming burrow found by a gold miner in the Yukon. But the seeds, later dated by the radiocarbon method, turned out to be modern contaminants.

[…]

What happened in Arctic regions so long ago? It has always been a fascination. Discoveries like this living yet dormant seed and the undigested meals in the stomachs of perfectly preserved mammoths among so many others… whatever it was, it was instantaneous… and that intrigues me no end. What on earth could do such a thing?

Permafrost… holder of mysteries, countless mysteries. Imagine what else could be found within it. Should dig it all up and find out!

Enjoy…

Peace.