Silene Regrew From Squirrel Cache

Scientists have regenerated a 32,000-year-old Arctic plant from fruit tissue preserved inside an Ice Age ground squirrel's cache in northeastern Siberia. Researchers discovered the fossilized burrows in 1995, with some holding hundreds of thousands of frozen seeds and fruits. A woman named Svetlana Yashina of the Russian Academy of Sciences cultured placental tissue from an immature Silene stenophylla fruit, producing 36 flowering plants that later created viable seeds. The species was not extinct, but the ancient plants differed subtly from their modern descendants.

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