Jason E. Andersen

This one isn’t so much a fun fact as much as a cool and fun thing that happened.

Bonus Fun Fact Thing that happened: In 2012, Russian scientists revived a 32,000 year old plant. It’s sort of like Jurassic Park, except plants instead of dinosaurs, and Paleolithic instead of Jurassic. Also, the plants didn’t spit goo or eat people. It’s really nothing like Jurassic Park at all, actually.

Researchers discovered a prehistoric squirrel burrow preserved in the soil of the permafrost. The burrow contained a bunch of stuff the squirrel had been collecting, including seed pods of a Silene stenophylla plant. Scientists tried to germinate the seeds directly, but that failed. They were, however, able to use the DNA in the seeds to clone the plant, growing 36 mature plants, appearing just as they would have 32,000 years ago.

Pretty cool, and scary. It really makes me wonder, as our climate warms and the permafrost continues to thaw out, what stuff is going to pop up and what will that mean for the planet?