Russians revive Ice Age flower from frozen burrow

AP ^ | 2/20/12 | VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

[LibWhacker]

MOSCOW (AP) -- It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 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.

The experiment proves that permafrost serves as a natural depository for ancient life forms, said the Russian researchers, who published their findings in Tuesday's issue of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" of the United States.

[null and void]

Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts.

"If we are lucky, we can find some frozen squirrel tissue," Gubin told the AP. "And this path could lead us all the way to mammoth."

Japanese scientists are already searching in the same area for mammoth remains, but Gubin voiced hope that the Russians will be the first to find some frozen animal tissue that could be used for regeneration.

Then later there's running and screaming...

[null and void]

Ooooooh! Ahhh!

[WXRGina]

30,000 years? And, they “know” this how?

Give me a break.

[BradyLS]

Is this particular plant species extinct otherwise?

[OldNavyVet]

The Preface of Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" tells us...

"In 1949 some friends and I came upon a noteworthy news item in Nature, a magazine of the Academy of Sciences. It reported in tiny type that in the course of excavations on the Kolyma River a subterranean ice lens had been discovered which was actually a frozen stream - and in it found frozen specimens of prehistoric fauna some tens of thousands of years old. Whether fish or salamander, these were preserved in so fresh a state, the scientific correspondent reported, that those present immediately broke open the ice encasing the specimens and devoured them with relish on the spot."

Solzhenitsyn went on to explain how starved those prisoners were. A perfect description as to how it was, is, and will always be ... under communism.

[Texas Fossil]

http://2007.botanyconference.org/engine/search/index.php?func=detail&aid=2131

“Acknowledgement: The project was supported by grants of US - Hungarian Fulbright Commission.”

[OldNavyVet]

I wonder if the article describes the people ... probably Gulag prisoners digging for gold ... that found the latest specimens.

[OldNavyVet]

I wonder if the article describes the people ... probably Gulag prisoners digging for gold ... that found the latest specimens.

[KC_Lion]

I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you, you've patented it, and packaged it, you've slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now your selling it, you want to sell it!

Seriously Though, I wonder what impact, if any, this may have on any modern planet or animal species, after this Flower being absent for Thousands and thousands of years?

[JRandomFreeper]

BFL

[OldNavyVet]

buried under a Pleistocene-age permafrost at a site near Kolyma, Russia.

The Kolyma River is where Solzhenitsyn spent his prison years.

They had access to books and Solzhenitsyn read a few science books and passed himself off as a trained scientist ... It landed him a State Laboratory where he faked his way through ... and survived.

[PetroniusMaximus]

Sounds like the last bit of A.I.

[Post Toasties]

Well, if it won’t cross genetically with anything living and other specimens aren’t recovered, it’s probable it won’t have enough genetic diversity to be viable as a natural species.

[KC_Lion]

You mean like using Using sophisticated techniques, they extract the preserved blood... from the mosquito, and bingo: Dino DNA! And Using the complete DNA of Frog to fill in the holes and complete the code!?

But I suppose you are correct, I still worry about these types of things though, we are meddling in stuff we aren't suppose too, and besides............Life Finds a Way.

[Dryman]

What if the pollen is what killed the squirrel? OMG! Maybe it killed the Dinosaurs!

[G Larry]

It was a GREY squirrel!!

[Little Bill]

Solzhenitsyn was a Math teacher, the Ruskies killed off all of the bright ones in WW2. He was selected to the First Circle to help the Ruskies develop what they got from the Germans as war booty, read the book.

[count-your-change]

The Russian scientists also found a frozen human and it reportedly took 3 liters of vodka to thaw him out. Whether the frozen man drank the vodka or the scientists isn’t known. But the thawed man was named the “The No Ice Man” if our translation is correct.