17 December 2024. Outdated information from 2012 with a latest replace.
Meals is scarce within the arctic throughout winter and early spring, so arctic floor squirrels (Urocitellus parryii) fatten up for hibernation and cache meals for later use.
After they get up in April they’ve seeds of their cache to fall again on earlier than the arctic blooms.
32,000 years in the past, throughout the Ice Age, a floor squirrel saved meals in his midden that he by no means ate. If all the things had remained frozen nobody would have identified about his cache, however local weather change is melting glaciers and historical ice. Ultimately the squirrel’s cache was uncovered.
Twelve years in the past Russian scientists collected the squirrel’s cache and located intact seeds inside in order that they cultivated them within the lab. The fertile seeds grew right into a 32,000 yr previous plant, the oldest on Earth.
After they printed their findings they continued their analysis and cultivated extra seeds, figuring out them as Silene linnaeana in 2021. This is identical genus as bladder campion.
from Late Pleistocene fruit materials at researchgate.internet
Right here’s a pattern blooming within the Sahka Republic of Russia in June 2023 (from iNaturalist).
What’s going to occur to this squirrel’s cache 32,000 years from now?
