Frozen plant blooms again after 30,000 years on ice
The Silene stenophylla has entered the record books as the oldest plant to ever have been regrown.
The seeds of the plant were discovered after a research team uncovered fossil burrows hidden in ice deposits in north-eastern Siberia. It dates back 30,000 to 32,000 years and the burrows were also found to hold the bones of large mammals, such as mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, horse and deer.
“The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber,” said Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. “It’s a natural cryobank.”
The burrows were firmly cemented together and often totally filled with ice, making any water infiltration impossible – creating a natural freezing chamber fully isolated from the surface. The researchers believe the results of this experiment could prove that permafrost serves a natural depository for ancient life forms.
“We consider it essential to continue permafrost studies in search of an ancient genetic pool, that of pre-existing life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the earth’s surface,” the scientists said in the article.
Svetlana Yashina of the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy Of Sciences, who led the regeneration effort, said the revived plant looked very similar to its modern version, which still grows in the same area in north-eastern Siberia.
Resource
http://news.sky.com/home/strange-news/article/16174136
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silene_stenophylla
