Environment

Moss reanimates after 400 years in Deep Freeze

Ancient plants have been brought back to life, despite having been frozen inside a glacier for over 400 years.

Researcher Catherine La Farge, director and curator of the Cryptogamic Herbarium at the University of Alberta, snagged moss which carbon-dating estimated was aged between 400 and 600 years old, frozen during the "Little Ice Age" between 1550 and 1850.

The scientists picked the plants from an area around the Teardrop Glacier in the Canadian Arctic, because La Farge noticed that some of them appeared to be regrowing once the ice had retreated. Glaciers in the region have been receding at a rate of around three to four metres a year, uncovering land that hasn't seen the Sun since the 1500s.

Once they got the plants back to the lab, La Farge and her co-authors successfully regenerated four species from the original parent material in 11 cultures from seven subglacial samples.