The name of this re-born plant is ‘The Silene Stenophylla’. This plant was buried by some squirrels 30,000 years ago. It was buried in Siberian permafrost. After 30,000 years later, The Silene Stenophylla was brought back from Siberian permafrost by using seeds buried by squirrels. For this 30,000 years, this seeds have been held in suspended animation by the cold. Scientists refer this as ‘frozen gene pool’.
This is great breakthrough. Those seeds could have been vanished or damaged long ago but still they were absolutely fine held in the frozen wastes. The seeds were dug out of the fossilized burrows of Arctic ground squirrels that roamed the bleak treeless tundra near modern day Kolyma in Russia during the Ice Age. After the seeds had brought out, powerful microscopes detected, they were the fruits of Silene Stenophylla. Silene Stenophylla is a small herbaceous plant that displays petite white flowers when blooms.
These seeds were preserved at a depth of 125 feet (38 metres) at sub-zero temperatures. Radio-carbon dating analysis indicated the plants age between 31,500 and 32,100 years old. This report was published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers said, “Because the squirrels’ pantries hugged ice wedges and icy sediment, their cache was quickly frozen and preserved without defrosting.” Dr David Gilichinsky, of the Soil Cryology Laboratory in Moscow, who is a lead researcher said, “The sediments were from an area known geologically as the Late Pleistocene and had a temperature of minus seven degrees centigrade that had ‘never thawed’”.
This is great breakthrough. Those seeds could have been vanished or damaged long ago but still they were absolutely fine held in the frozen wastes. The seeds were dug out of the fossilized burrows of Arctic ground squirrels that roamed the bleak treeless tundra near modern day Kolyma in Russia during the Ice Age. After the seeds had brought out, powerful microscopes detected, they were the fruits of Silene Stenophylla. Silene Stenophylla is a small herbaceous plant that displays petite white flowers when blooms.
These seeds were preserved at a depth of 125 feet (38 metres) at sub-zero temperatures. Radio-carbon dating analysis indicated the plants age between 31,500 and 32,100 years old. This report was published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers said, “Because the squirrels’ pantries hugged ice wedges and icy sediment, their cache was quickly frozen and preserved without defrosting.” Dr David Gilichinsky, of the Soil Cryology Laboratory in Moscow, who is a lead researcher said, “The sediments were from an area known geologically as the Late Pleistocene and had a temperature of minus seven degrees centigrade that had ‘never thawed’”.
