Ancient plant resurrected after 32,000 years
14:00 AEDT
Wed Feb 22 2012
5 hours 23 minutes ago

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8423853

A team of Russian scientists has successfully grown a living plant from the fruit of a flower that died 32,000 years ago.

The narrow-leafed campion's fruit was buried deep in an ancient arctic squirrel burrow in northern Siberia, the New York Times reports.

The team, led by Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences, excavated the burrow and found more than 600,000 seeds and fruits.

After unsuccessfully attempting to grow the plants from the seeds, the team of scientists turned to the fruit and extracted the placenta from which they were able to produce 36 of the ancient plants.

Radiocarbon dating put the age of the seeds at 31,800 years, nearly 30,000 older than a date plant grown from a 2000-year-old seed in Israel which previously held the record.

The frozen location of the fruit and the relatively low radioactivity in the area allowed the specimens to survive such a long time, the researchers suggested.

However, some experts, such as Alastair Murdoch at the University of Reading in England, are sceptical and hoping for further proof.

"It's beyond the bounds of what we'd expect," he said of the seed's survival.

At first I read this as a Stargate reference.  I thought maybe Dr. Beckett had recovered and found a way to revitalize all those potted plants that had been in Atlantis when the expedition team first gated in.  Of course, that was only ten thousand years, not thirty two.

This post was last modified: 02-22-2012 10:51 AM by Lang.

Many of the claims of growing ancient stuff have been refuted.  This one (I heard) is "legit"...
Heard a radio program about this yesterday... very jurrasic park ( they talk also about growing squirrels...the material was extracted from a squirrel nest) (LOL, sure, make more rodents!)

okay someone here is bound to tell me 31,800 years ago is not the jurrasic period - I am NOT going to look it up...

This post was last modified: 02-22-2012 04:12 PM by windy.