Official News page 5

REAL LIFE NEWS: BRINGING ANCIENT PLANTS BACK TO LIFE

by Hazed

More than 30,000 years ago some squirrels dug burrows in a river bank, and used them to store foodstuffs such as seeds and fruit. But the climate suddenly got colder and the burrows iced up, and remained permanently frozen ever since. This preserved the plants inside them.

Now scientists from Russia’s Institute of Cell Biophysics have taken those frozen plants back to their labs. They tried to germinate the seeds they found in the burrows, with no success, but then they used elements of the fruits and propagated the plants in laboratory dishes. These 30,000 year old plants have been brought back to life.

This is the oldest plant material that has ever been revived – and it’s much less scary than Jurassic Park!

Read more about how the plants were grown here.

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