Dead for 32,000 Years, an Arctic Plant Is Revived [Free registration may be required] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/new-life-from-an-arctic-flower-that-died-32000-years-ago.html Ancient plants back to life after 30,000 frozen years http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17100574 Wild flower blooms again after 30,000 years on ice http://www.nature.com/news/wild-flower-blooms-again-after-30-000-years-on-ice-1.10069 Future zoos to have woolly mammoths and tiger robots http://news.discovery.com/animals/future-zoos-woolly-mammoths-tiger-robots-clone-120217.html Botany: An Introduction to Plant Biology http://biology.jbpub.com/botany/4e/ Botanical Society of America: Plant Morphology http://www.botany.org/plantimages/plantmorphology.php It may be a while before scientists resurrect woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers, but as of this week, the world is now home (once again) to the narrow-leafed campion. This tiny arctic flower died out 32,000 years ago, but this week a new report was released in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that announced the triumphant return of the ancient plant. The team working on this project is based at the Russian Academy of Sciences research center, and has backed up its claim of plant regeneration with a firm radiocarbon date. The current record for a similar plant regeneration is held by a date palm recovered from the fortress of Masada. As it turns out, the material for this project came from fruit from the plant stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow in Siberia. The procedure for creating such a plant is quite complex: the researchers essentially took cells from the placenta of the fruit, thawed out the cells, and grew them in culture dishes into whole plants. While their claim needs to be independently verified, it certainly looks quite promising. The first link will take visitors to a New York Times article from this Tuesday about this recent scientific discovery and experiment. The second link will take interested parties to a great piece from the BBC's Richard Black about this rather fantastic scientific endeavor. The third link will lead people to a nice article from Nature's Sharon Levy about the work done by the Russian scientists to make this experiment feasible. The fourth link leads visitors to a speculative piece about the future possibilities that cloning might have for zoos in the decades to come, courtesy of Discovery News. The fifth link will take visitors to a great resource for those interested in plant biology: an online complement to a botany textbook, complete with discussion questions, plant biology basics, and so on. The final link will whisk interested parties to a great site on plant morphology, complete with annotated images.