Extinct Plants Regain their Existence…!

(ST) – Modern environmental reports indicate that the rate of extinction and decline of plant and animal species, that our planet is witnessing, has not occurred on the ground since sixty-five million years ago, when dinosaurs became extinct unfortunately in this rate.

 If the current deterioration happening now does not stop, we may approach a mass extinction similar to what happened before to the environment. The world will lose and forever about fifty-five percent of the organisms through a period ranging between fifty and a hundred years from now. Over the next thirty years, scientists predict the extinction of nearly a quarter of the known mammals and ten species of birds, a large proportion of the plants because of environmental pollution and climate change.

In a positive step, some scientists were able to restore some of those extinct plants thousands of years ago by textile biotechnology of agriculture and from small parts were buried since ancient times!! Russian scientists were able to grow plants from fruit stored by squirrels in the ice. The fruit was found near the banks of Kolyma River in Siberia. It is considered one of the prominent locations for those who are looking for the bones of giant animals.

A team from the Plant Cells Biophysics Institute took some plants of “Celine Stnovila” of fruit. Scientists have noted in a research paper that they are the oldest plants to grow again. Before that, the oldest plant, that it is grown again, is the seeds of palm trees that were preserved for 2,000 years in Palestine.

Researchers talk about finding about 70 burrows of squirrels on the riverbank. All the burrows they found were at a depth of between 20 to 40 meters. The burrows were composed of layers containing bones of large mammals such as mammoths, rhinos, deer, and horses.

It seems that squirrels put the fruit in the more cool parts of burrows to remain frozen permanently, perhaps due to the cold climate in this region. Attempts were made by the team of researchers to grow the mature seeds again, but they failed. At the end, they achieved success when they use “fabric chorionic” inside the fruit. The surprise was the presence of the viable material from this placental tissue and not from the mature seeds.

The theory of the Russian team focuses that tissue cells are saturated with sugar, which represents food for cultivated plants. The sugar is one of the conservative materials, and therefore sugar-rich cells may have been able to survive and remain viable throughout this long period. The plants “Celine Stnovila” grow in the Siberian plain. The researchers found a clear difference in the form of flower petals and the sex of flowers in comparison with  modern plants and those were grown again of old fruit, but they were unable to identify obvious reasons behind it.

Scientists refer that this kind of research can help in the studies of evolution. It also sheds light on the environmental conditions over thousands of years ago. Perhaps, the most attractive proposal, that the same techniques can be used to grow extinct plants at this time if the wild squirrels in the Arctic or some other animals had stockpiled fruit and seeds.

Sh.  Al -Khatib