32,000 year old plant revived from Russian permafrost?!

[DavidBrown]

There is a new paper out claiming that a 32,000 fruit from a plant that was living in a Pleistocene ecosystem full of mammoths and wooly rhinos has been germinated. If this result is real (and there are some doubts), then it is possible that many plant species from the Pleistocene may be brought back to life. Fascinating, if true (and I hope it is).


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/s...-arctic-flower-that-died-32000-years-ago.html

 

[Chlidonias]

a very interesting article indeed. I hadn't been aware that the 10,000 year old lupin seeds from the Yukon had been shown to not be that old after all.

 

[nanoboy]

Hmmm... this raises some eyebrows... "Seeds from the ancient plants germinated with 100 percent success, compared with 90 percent for seeds from living campions."

Also, I wonder if the plants had anything to do with this: "Tragedy has now struck the Russian team. Dr. Gilichinksy, its leader, was hospitalized with an asthma attack and unable to respond to questions, his daughter Yana said on Friday. On Saturday, Dr. Price reported that Dr. Gilichinsky had died of a heart attack."

Reminds me a bit of an X-Files episode - the one where loggers were cutting down old growth forest and there was an organism within the trees that we had no resistance to.