Russian scientists successfully grow plants from 30,000-year-old seeds

Russian scientists have successfully grown plants from seeds found frozen in the Siberian permafrost for about 30,000 years, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Tuesday.

Seeds of the Silene stenophylla were found 38 meters underground in the Kolyma river bank, where a team from the Institute of Cell Biophysics was studying squirrel burrows, according to the reports.

The scientists, led by professor David Gilichinsky, extracted the "placental tissue" from the immature seeds and used the material to raise the plant successfully.

The scientists said they found subtle differences between the revived plants and its modern version, including that the prehistoric plants have "male" and "female" genders while their modern descendants combine both genders' characters in a single inflorescence.

The researchers said this is the oldest plant material by far to have been brought to life.

The findings were published in Tuesday's issue of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" of the United States.