Urocitellus parryii
It seems like a discovery straight out of a movie, but it happened. Scientists recently managed to resurrect a plant from seeds buried by an Ice Age squirrel around 31,800 years ago.
The discovery, recently highlighted in the book The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs, by paleontologist Dean Lomax, is a fable, notes the .
It all starts on the banks of the Kolyma River, where researchers discovered a frozen burrow belonging to an Arctic ground squirrel, probably Urocitellus parryii. The ancient burrow, preserved in sediments of permafrostalso contained remains of Ice Age fauna, such as mammoths, woolly rhinos and bison. But the real treasure was hidden in the squirrel’s storage chambers: between 600,000 and 800,000 frozen seeds since or Pleistocene.
Intrigued by their state of preservation, a team of Russian scientists decided to test whether these ancient seeds could still germinate. After several failed attempts, they managed one in 2012, successfully regenerating plants from Ice Age seeds. The resurrected species was initially identified as Silene stenophylla, and was later reclassified as Silene linnaeana, a flowering plant that still exists in the Arctic tundra of Siberia.
The regenerated plants not only grew but also produced flowers, fruits and new seeds, becoming the oldest viable biological material known to date.
Lomax warns that this preservation is unique in relatively recent geological periods. Seeds or tissues from the dinosaur era – tens of millions of years ago – could never survive in these conditions. Unlike permafrost, which can preserve organic matter for tens of millennia, much older Mesozoic sediments have undergone complete fossilization.
Although it is possible to find plants preserved in amber, their biological structure has long been fossilized, making them infertile.
