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A Judean date palm — a variety that was wiped out in the 6th century — has been grown from a 2,000 year-old seed found in an archeological excavation ten years ago, and is now reproducing:
Talk about perseverance, not to mention the mastery of nature’s design when it comes to plants. Decades ago a 2,000-year-old seed was plucked from an archaeological excavation near the Dead Sea. After many years lingering in a researcher's drawer in Tel Aviv, Elaine Solowey, director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura in Israel, decided to give germination a go. Ten years later, and “Methuselah” (why don’t all plants have names?) is thriving. And not only thriving, but reproducing. Mazel tov!
Methuselah is a Judean date palm, a variety that was wiped out sometime in the 6th century, making the lonely male long the only one of its kind. Genetic testing reveal that Methuselah is closely related to an ancient variety of date palm from Egypt called Hayany – which corresponds with the legend indicating that dates came to Israel with the Exodus, Solowey says.
No word on the nutrition and flavor of its dates, but it's a good argument for projects like the Global Seed Vault.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2015, @01:26PM
Hello?! Hurricane Katrina. The AIDS. These are just some of God's punishments for not following His word.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2015, @05:48PM
Per the Book of Job, those are not "punishments" but "tests of faith". It appears that the only people who read The Bible are non-Christians; if they ever did read The Bible, they would know that the smiting of Sodom and Gomorrah was for inhospitality, that God's First and Second commandments make Christianity nothing short of blasphemy, that Jesus of Nazareth was a communist and capitalism is evil, that their endless hate for their fellow humans is extremely sinful, and that those who claim to speak for God, like you are, are the worst of sinners and shall burn eternally in the pit of fire.