# The million year seed



## Jason K Albee (Apr 1, 2011)

Dinosaurs are part of the animal kingdom. In the movie, Jurassic Park, dinosaurs were created from ancient DNA. The DNA was taken out of a mosquito trapped in amber. Amber can store DNA material for millions of years. For example, insects, frogs, and other small animals have been trapped in amber.

There is a great fascination in bringing long extinct animals back to life. Most young boys would like a dinosaur for a pet or some kind of ancient creature. These animals have come to life in books, movies, computer games and the World Wide Web.

Some animals, like the dinosaurs, may never be able to be brought back, but other large animals, like Woolly Mammoths, might be able to be cloned because of their close relationship with elephants. This is a fascinating kingdom, but there is a whole other one just as fascinating.

Now there is a whole other kingdom that does not get as much attention. That kingdom is the plant kingdom. Seeds can be the size of an insect, but grow up to be over a hundred feet tall. The Red Woods, because of their size, fascinate us.

As with so many animal species that do not exist anymore, there are also many plant species that also went extinct. They too are as fascinating as the giant Red Wood trees.

Just as amber traps small animals, it can trap seeds for a millennium. The oldest known seed that has germinated is a 2000-year-old palm seed from an excavation at Herod’s palace in Israel.

I would love to hear others’ thoughts about this and what they also have come across.


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 1, 2011)

Amber, as you know is _fossilized_ pine tree resin? A fossilized tree is one in which the original organic cells have been replaced by opal, which is why its called a _petrified_ tree, from the latin _petros _= stone.
I'm not that sure how amber would be properly classified. The trees from which it originated were growing long before the Colorado River started carving the Grand Canyon. The stuff is _old_, man.
Yet it is clearly still organic, you can burn it in a candle flame? Or not? I'm not sure.
Point being that if amber _is _petrified, so are the mosquitos etc trapped inside it -- they are no longer real insects, but opal insects?
Same would go for seeds.
But I'm not too sure of all my facts here ...
On the same subject, Graham Hancock in his very important book 'Fingerprints of the Gods' writes that there is a restaurant in Norway that serves wooly mammoth steaks. Tropical animals flash frozen in Siberian ice, with buttercups still in their intestines ...


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 1, 2011)

Ok, here we go, from _Answers.com ..._
"Amber is not a mineral but time-hardened fossilized resin of the species of pine called Pinus Succinisera which grew in forsets around 45 million years ago, in the European main land known as the Baltic region today. Amber is a hydrocarbon (C10H16O). It is a complex mixture of several resinous bodies, succinic acid, volatile oil and also contains some amount of hydrogen sulphide (H2S)"
ie: not a rock ...
And from _Morganbay.com ..._
"The Grand Canyon began to open at least 17 million years ago -- older than previously believed -- report researchers writing in the journal _Science_ etc ..."
So at least I got that part right.
And it should be a lot easier to germinate a seed than clone an insect, or a dinosaur, even if you're looking at a seed that was 28million years old when the Grand Canyon wasn't even there yet!


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## Vertigo (Apr 1, 2011)

As I understand it we are a long long way from being able to patch up any shreds of DNA that old even if you could extract some from the Amber. On the Mammoths, I know that some that have been recovered from permafrost are in a remarkably good state of preservation and that there has been speculation about recovering DNA from them. I'm not sure what the current state of play is on that one.

However, and this is a big however, bringing back long extinct animals like this, especially if you go all the way back to dinosaurs, would be potentially very very dangerous. The ecology that they lived in has long since gone and introducing them to the present day ecology could potentially be devastating to that ecology or them.

Most herbivores have evolved to eat particular plants and may simply refuse to eat other plants. Consider for example the Panda and there are many other specialist feeders around today. It would be silly to assume the same is not true of herbivores back then. Predators on the other hand are usually pretty good opportunists so they may well be able to adapt, but at what cost to both the current native prey and predators. Whenever we dabble in this kind of thing it normally ends in disaster and is virtually impossible to predict.

Just ask the Australians. Or take Yellowstone in America; they exterminated all the wolves there a long time back and the result was an overpopulation of deer. The deer have then destroyed much of the forestry in their desperation for winter food. This removed willows from the river banks and so eliminated beavers which in turn devastated the river ecology with the removal of their damns and the pools they created. More recently (about ten years ago I think) they re-introduced wolves and the deer population has fallen back, the forestry is recovering and the beaver are returning. 

Nature has usually worked things out pretty darn well - until we came along that is - and therefore trying to bring back animals long since gone is probably ill-advised. Bringing back animals that we have removed and so upset things is far more likely to be beneficial but note; I only say "more likely". Even there it is difficult to predict. Look again at America where in, I think, Montana the wild horse population is causing major problems as they have no natural predators. They are actually talking about introducing lions there, believe it or not, in the hope that they can balance things back up again. However this is always going to be dangerous (and I don't mean for humans!); what if the lions decide that the horses are just too much of a pain to catch and the local cattle herds are a much easier target!

Local ecologies are simply too complex too fool around with unless you really really have to!


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## woodsman (Apr 1, 2011)

You don't have to reintroduce such things to the wild though and I doubt they'd ever 'produce' enough mammoths to make that a viable proposition. 

On seeds, it's happened quite a lot I remember an ancient seed was germinated in Japan bringing back an extinct tree. The Australians rediscovered the Wollemia pine (incorrectly named but hey) in a remote Queensland valley and have made large efforts to spread it again with no detrimental impacts thus far. 

The millenium seed project in the UK has collected thousands of seed from all sorts of species and their varietals and stores them so we don't lose them in the future. I think they remove seeds from storage and regrow them every so often and then re-harvest fresh seed. 

A number of ancient plants - cycads still exist and live quite happily in certain areas. Unlike say dinosaurs (I hope)


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## skeptical (Apr 5, 2011)

Seeds do not last for ever.
After a sufficient number of thousands of years, every last cell in a plant seed will be dead.   At that point, it cannot be germinated.  Even if stored in amber.

This is quite different to the idea of resuscitating a mammoth.  That is possible in theory, though impossible with current technology.   If a seed was found in the permafrost, 10,000 years old, it might be germinated.   But not one millions of years old.

Another interesting possibility is to resuscitate organisms preserved in alcohol.  Apparently, extinct animals preserved in alcohol, unlike formalin, have little damage to their DNA.   The Tasmanian Wolf, for example, has several fetuses preserved in alcohol.   Cells from those might be a source for DNA, and a new cloned Wolf.  Though the technology still has to improve a lot, first.


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## Stephen Palmer (Apr 6, 2011)

I'd recommend reading the novel _Siberia_ by Ann Halam.


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## psychotick (Apr 27, 2011)

Hi,

Seeds stored with ancient Egyption pharoes have been successfully germinated, so provided the conditions are right, they can remain viable for thousands of years. However fossilization is a different thing altogether. It involves replacing all the carbon in an organic thing with minerals, hence the reason that fossils are actually stone. DNA is an organic molecule based on carbon. Fossilised DNA, if it exists, could not be viable.

However, there is another way. Studies have shown that the vast majority of DNA in people and other animals is what's called junk DNA, old stuff that's basically redundant and not used in the template for the creation of the new organism. It should be possible to reactivate this junk DNA and in doing so restore some of the characteristics of the prehistoric ancestors of the modern species. Of course it'd be a bit of guessing game as to which traits go with which ancestor.

Cheers.


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## Parson (Apr 27, 2011)

Vertigo said:


> Even there it is difficult to predict. Look again at America where in, I think, Montana the wild horse population is causing major problems as they have no natural predators. They are actually talking about introducing lions there, believe it or not, in the hope that they can balance things back up again. However this is always going to be dangerous (and I don't mean for humans!); what if the lions decide that the horses are just too much of a pain to catch and the local cattle herds are a much easier target!
> 
> Local ecologies are simply too complex too fool around with unless you really really have to!



I know that the Wild Horse population is becoming troublesome in Montana, but they would not have to re-introduce Mountain Lions. They are still alive and well in Montana, and you might be surprised to learn that they pay occasional visits to more settled areas like Iowa. Some farmers with 3 miles of my house killed a Mountain lion about 5 years ago. First one in Iowa since the 1880's. But since then there have been 2 other confirmed lions and a couple of suspected ones. So far they have all been young males looking for a range of their own.


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## Vertigo (Apr 27, 2011)

The bizarre thing Parson was they were not talking about *re-introducing* mountain lions but *introducing* African lions. The reasoning is that they are the most successfull hunters of Zebras and Zebras are the closest thing to a horse that are still naturally predated (is that the right verb?). I'm not sure that your native mountain lions don't prefer to go for slightly smaller prey than horses; my understanding is that they will take horses or even moose but generally prefer smaller deer.

However I must admit to being seriously surprised when I heard it (it was a BBC documentary a while back).


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## Parson (Apr 27, 2011)

Vertigo said:


> The bizarre thing Parson was they were not talking about *re-introducing* mountain lions but *introducing* African lions. The reasoning is that they are the most successfull hunters of Zebras and Zebras are the closest thing to a horse that are still naturally predated (is that the right verb?). I'm not sure that your native mountain lions don't prefer to go for slightly smaller prey than horses; my understanding is that they will take horses or even moose but generally prefer smaller deer.
> 
> However I must admit to being seriously surprised when I heard it (it was a BBC documentary a while back).



That is bizarre! I believe that the natural mountain lion/panther would rather take on smaller prey than a mature horse almost always. African lions? that would not have a snowballs chance on August 1 in Iowa of being popularly accepted.


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## Vertigo (Apr 27, 2011)

Well that was my thought too, but they talked to a number of American scientists who seemed very serious about it. 

They won't even let us re-introduce beavers over here (there is just one tiny and highly controversial site in Scotland), despite the fact that they have been re-introduced successfully into every other European country that has lost them with no effects except a huge improvement in the local ecology. All attempts to re-introduce wolves as natural predators for the deer in the Highlands have been continually blocked, so we continue to have much too high a deer population, that does huge damage to the environment. Anywhere they try to restore some of the ancient forest they have to go to massive expense to keep the deer out. In other words you try to restore some ancient wild woodland and you have to surround it with a 12 foot high fence. Very wild eh?


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## Metryq (Apr 27, 2011)

Vertigo said:


> All attempts to re-introduce wolves as natural predators for the deer in the Highlands have been continually blocked, so we continue to have much too high a deer population, that does huge damage to the environment.



But—but—but, you can't let some _evil_ wolves attack Bambi! 

The natural order of the world is always evil in the eyes of those who champion nature and "Gaia." A friend who collects exotic chickens stepped out one morning to see one of his new acquisitions being carried away in the claws of a hawk. His response was not what I expected, and it almost made me laugh as he said, sounding all choked up, "It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw!"

Oh, and I imagine a hunting season is out, too? Guns = bad! Better to let an unbalanced ecology lead to damage and suffering for all involved.


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## Vertigo (Apr 27, 2011)

We have to have the hunting season up here, on National Trust estates the Gillies have to cull deer every year, elsewhere it's commercial. We are their only predators now and without it the population would get too high and then starve the first hard winter we get. Mind you that often happens anyway as many estates maintain their populations too high 

And yes poor little Bambi...  Disney has a lot to answer for


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## Dave (Apr 28, 2011)

This is a thread created by a spammer purely to hide some promotion of his own self-published book, but since it now has a life of his own, i'd just like to add/correct/note something:


Vertigo said:


> As I understand it we are a long long way from being able to patch up any shreds of DNA that old even if you could extract some from the Amber.


Actually, according to NASA, _Jurassic Park_ was named the 7th most realistic scifi film: 
NASA names daftest sci-fi films ever : Chronicles Network: Science Fiction & Fantasy


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## skeptical (Apr 28, 2011)

Actually, and sadly, most scifi, whether written or as movie, is scientifically untenable.   The Star Trek warp drive is not possible.   Any form of FTL travel or communication breaks the laws of physics as we know them.

Genuinely realistic scifi is rare indeed.   _Gattaca_, as NASA said, is a rare exception.   My favourite realistic scifi book is Larry Niven with The _Legacy of Heorot_.


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## Metryq (Apr 28, 2011)

Dave said:


> Actually, according to NASA, _Jurassic Park_ was named the 7th most realistic scifi film



This would be the same NASA that pushes global warming through James Hansen, and former employer of professional conspiracy theorist Richard Hoagland, who believes the agency is "covering up" evidence of alien structures on the moon. 

Since _Jurassic Park_ was mentioned, my favorite scene is where a lab tech in a clean suit and gloves brushes pencil eraser crumbs off his clipboard in the incubator room. My second favorite bit is where a T-rex stomps out of his paddock to attack the stalled jeeps. A minute or two later one of those jeeps is pushed into the paddock—where the rex was standing previously—only now it is a sharp, 30 meter drop.


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## Vertigo (Apr 28, 2011)

Dave said:


> This is a thread created by a spammer purely to hide some promotion of his own self-published book, but since it now has a life of his own, i'd just like to add/correct/note something:
> 
> Actually, according to NASA, _Jurassic Park_ was named the 7th most realistic scifi film:
> NASA names daftest sci-fi films ever : Chronicles Network: Science Fiction & Fantasy


 
Well I would bow to superior knowledge there, Dave. I'm certainly no expert on the current state of genetic research but it had been my impression that we were still a long way off. 

And I notice the reporter on that page does put in "really?"


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## Metryq (Apr 28, 2011)

*Could Jurassic Park Soon Become A Reality?*



> The fact is that the genome of long extinct animals gets harder and harder to sequence because of natural degradation of DNA. If a mammoth, for example, had a genome 3.5 million letters long, and you only recovered 3.499 million, you could not recreate the perfect creature. Where would the point be in bringing something 'back' to life if it had never actually existed in that form at all?



I had thought the mammoths passed with the last ice age, around 10,000 years ago. However, I read in one book that they may have existed as late as the pharaohs of ancient Egypt on isolated islands to the north of Siberia. (I've read a lot of ice age books and cannot find the passage I am looking for. However, it may have been Nicholas Wade's _Before the Dawn_, 2006, a layman's tour of the "genetic archaeology" done in the last decade or so.)

So while it is technically possible to restore extinct creatures to life, there is a big difference between cells preserved for 4,000 to 10,000 years or so in permafrost and DNA "preserved" in the gut of a desiccated mosquito for 65—120 _million_ years. Given time, perhaps nothing is beyond the reach of technology. But is the intact DNA of any creature that old to be found anywhere even in the deepest recesses of the Earth? Recent work also shows that DNA is only the "computer" while "switches" on the genes are the software. In other words, you could have several dozen creatures with _exactly_ the same DNA, yet each organism could display large scale differences. Is all of _that_ information still available for creatures as "recent" as the last ice age?


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## RJM Corbet (Apr 28, 2011)

Metryq said:


> This would be the same NASA that pushes global warming through James Hansen, and former employer of professional conspiracy theorist Richard Hoagland, who believes the agency is "covering up" evidence of alien structures on the moon.
> 
> Since _Jurassic Park_ was mentioned, my favorite scene is where a lab tech in a clean suit and gloves brushes pencil eraser crumbs off his clipboard in the incubator room. My second favorite bit is where a T-rex stomps out of his paddock to attack the stalled jeeps. A minute or two later one of those jeeps is pushed into the paddock—where the rex was standing previously—only now it is a sharp, 30 meter drop.


 
Global warming might be good for us, if Graham Hancock is right, in his book 'Fingerprints of the Gods.' If we can get those ice caps melted down by December 2012, we'll lose a few cities to rising sea levels, but it might help delay the whole crust of the earth from slipping over the mantle -- due in part to the accumulating weight of ice -- and the ice caps arriving in the tropics, while all the continents end up in different latitudes and longitudes. Not to be confused with continental drift.
Suddenly India ends up where Canada is now, or Brazil moves up Russia's present position on the globe -- the old ice caps start melting, _fast _-- once again exposing the continent of Anartica. New ice caps begin to form at the poles, and in 14 000 years the scientists on the continent of Anartica are looking at infinity of galaxies through increasingly sophisticated space telescopes and trying to understand dark matter and to reconcile quantum/gravity, while freaks are weaving ever more mystical legends around the lost continent of Australia (now frozen under 8 miles of ice at the south pole) and they're finding hippos and rhinos and elephants perfectly preserved in the African permafrost ice, along with plastic coke bottles, beneath layers of stone/bronze/iron age implements under the aurora borealis in the arctic circle.
It wouldn't surprise me that Stephen Spielberg might find it in his interests to make a substantial doantion to a cash strapped NASA. Now _there's _the genome of a nice little conspiracy theory. Let the cranks get hold of that one ...


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