Antarctic moss regrown after being trapped in ice for 1,500 years
In what they are calling the most extreme case of frozen plant regeneration ever documented, scientists are claiming to have regrown shoots of Antarctic moss that were trapped beneath layers of ice and frost for more than 1,500 years.
In what they are calling the most extreme case of frozen plant regeneration ever documented, scientists are claiming to have regrown shoots of Antarctic moss that were trapped beneath layers of ice and frost for more than 1,500 years.
In a paper published on Monday in the journal , scientists from the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Reading, in England, said the regrowth occurred in a sample taken from a gigantic bank of moss on remote Signy Island.
"These mosses were basically in a very long-term deep freeze," co-author and terrestrial ecologist Peter Convey wrote. "This timescale of survival and recovery is much, much longer than anything reported before."
Cryptobiosis, or "hidden life", describes the ability of some invertebrates, plants and microbes to enter suspended animation when faced with environmental extremes, such as intense cold or lack of moisture. It was thought they could survive like that for no more than a couple of decades.
"Here we show unprecedented millennial-scale survival and viability deep within an Antarctic moss bank preserved in permafrost," Convey wrote.
The moss, , can grow more than three metres into high banks in the maritime Antarctic. New growth occurs at the surface, while lower levels become part of the permafrost, researchers say.
