“This is like regenerating a dinosaur from tissues of an ancient egg,” said University of California, Los Angeles biologist Jane Shen-Miller.

　　The plant has a long history. Back when mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses walked the land, an Arctic ground squirrel buried seeds and fruits in an underground chamber near the Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia. The ground became permafrost, a layer of soil that stays frozen for a long time.

　　Recently, Russian scientists dug out the old squirrel hole and found the plant remains 38 meters below the surface. Back at the lab, the team fed nutrients to tissue from three of the fruits to grow shoots. Then the scientists transferred the shoots to pots filled with soil. The plants produced seeds that could be used to grow even more of them.

　　It’s important for scientists to know that plant tissues can still be revived after being frozen for a long time. That’s because many researchers are trying to preserve the seeds of modern plants by freezing them and then storing them in giant lockers at various spots around the globe. One such endeavor, an underground facility in Norway, is called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It stores hundreds of thousands of frozen seeds. If a plant ever goes extinct, scientists could bring it back by taking its seeds from the Svalbard or other storage lockers.

　　“No one knows how long they are able to live for, but freezing is basically the format for many plant conservation attempts nowadays.” Shen-Miller said. It’s a good thing that at least some plants are tough enough to survive the experience.

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