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Ice Age Flower

February 21, 2012 by · Comments Off on Ice Age Flower 

Ice Age Flower, They say the Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated and is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds.

The raw material for the project was fruit tissues from an Ice Age squirrel’s chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years.

The Russians said the experiment proves that permafrost serves as a natural depository for ancient life forms. They published their findings in Tuesday’s “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” of the United States.

“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.

Canadian researchers had earlier regenerated some significantly younger plants from seeds found in burrows.

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