Scrat must be ticked off!
Amongst all the destruction, pollution etc etc that is always covered in the news, it is nice to read something so amazing, that it is almost unbelievable...
A Russian team discovered a seed cache of Silene stenophylla, a flowering plant native to Siberia, that had been buried by an Ice Age squirrel near the banks of the Kolyma River.
Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the seeds were 32,000 years old.
Check out the amazing plant:
The mature and immature seeds, which had been entirely encased in ice, were unearthed from 124 feet (38 meters) below the permafrost, surrounded by layers that included mammoth, bison, and woolly rhinoceros bones.
The mature seeds had been damaged—perhaps by the squirrel itself, to prevent them from germinating in the burrow. But some of the immature seeds retained viable plant material.
The team extracted that tissue from the frozen seeds, placed it in vials, and successfully germinated the plants, according to a new study. The plants—identical to each other but with different flower shapes from modern S. stenophylla—grew, flowered, and, after a year, created seeds of their own.
Mother nature 1 - Old age 0
Scrat from Ice age must be hating life...
-Jason