Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Jurassic botanical gardens

This just astounds me. Look at this flower:

MOSCOW — It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for more than 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species.

The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds.
To be clear, they extracted the material from a fossil. As in a piece of stone. Amazing.

Photo credit and full story here.

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