Monday, March 19, 2012

32,000 years dead- and alive!

In a recent article of the New York Times, Nicholas Wade summarized a finding by a team of Russian scientists.

A narrow-leafed Arctic plant, the campion, that died nearly 32,000 years ago was found in northeastern Siberia a few years ago. The fruit of the plant was apparentaly burried by an Arctic squirrel and laid permanently frozen until being found. If this is indeed a true campion, this plant will be the oldest plant ever to be grown from ancient tissue.

Unfortunately, in the past there have been tales of growing ancient wheat from the tombs of pharaohs and when these seeds were dated by the radiocarbon method they turned out to be modern contaminents.

Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky, of the Russian Academy of Sciences research center at Pushchino, led the new report of this amazing breakthrough. Researchers excavated ancient squirrel burrows for seeds and later buried them 125 feet under ground and froze them at mine 7 degrees Celsius. From one of these burrows, Russian researchers tried to then germinate the campion seeds but were not successful.

They then took cells from the placenta, thawed out the cells, and grew them in culture dishes into whole plants. 36 ancients plants were achieved and the researchers claim to have obtained a radiocarbon date of 31,800 years from seeds attached to the same placenta.

The researchers claim the the special circumstances that the squirrels had constructed may have added the the longetivity of the campion plant cells. However, there is still much to prove that these grown plants are in fact replicas of the ancient plant that was thought to have died so many years ago.

Tragically, Dr. Gilichinsky was hospitalized and later died of a heart attack leaving his team to finish the work. However, if this claim can be proving true it may be possible to resurrect other ancient plants from the permafrost that have been dead for several years.

1 comment:

  1. How did the squirrel not freeze when burrying the plant at such a cold temperature? This article is intresting though however it is unfortunante the scientist that started and made the original discovry passed and could not see his research through to the end.

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