World’s Oldest Viable Seeds

Until recently, the oldest regenerated ancient plans were date palms grown from seeds found at the famous Masada fortress. That record was not only eclipsed, it was shattered when Russian scientists managed to grow plants from seeds buried by squirrels more than 30,000 years ago.

The seeds were those of a fruit-bearing plant known as Silene stenophylla. The seeds were found in a permafrost layer in Siberia and carefully carbon dated. They were found to be 31,800 years old plus or minus 300 years.

Silene stenophylla never became extinct and is still found on the Siberian tundra, giving scientists a chance to study differences and similarities between the modern plants and their ancient ancestors. It also suggests that other plant materials stored in permafrost could also be brought back, including some extinct species.

Technically, the plants were grown not from the actual seeds themselves, but from the tissues in the fruit to which the seeds were attached. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable achievement for the team led by cryologists Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is likely that once these plants have bloomed, viable seeds can be recovered.

This remarkable achievement began with the discovery of about 70 squirrel hibernation burrows found along the banks of the lower Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia. These burrows were found to contain hundreds of thousands of seed samples from a number of different plants. They were 65 to 130 feet (20 to 40 meters) below the present day surface of the river bank. These layers also contained bones of such Late Pleistocene-age animals as wooly rhinoceros, bison, deer, horse, and mammoth. Apparently, the burrows were quickly covered with ice and remained frozen continuously until they were discovered. Could these frozen burrows yield clues to the event that produced Siberia’s flash-frozen mammoths?

There’s more information about these ancient plants here: