The 32,000 year-old stash of a Siberian arctic ground squirrel gave two Russian Scientists the opportunity to bring an ice age variety of Silene stenophylla, a narrow-leafed campion, back to life. The plant had shared the Siberian plains with mammoths, wooly rhinoceroses, and giant bison. Silene serves as an example of the rich biological material encased in permafrost, an ice age legacy totaling almost one fifth of the land area on our planet.
The image I created for a November 2012 article in The North Forty News (http://www.northfortynews.com/resurrection-from-permafrost-and-other-ice-age-legacies/) shows what the resurrected plant looks like. The mammoth in the background represents the paleoartist’s longing to actually see an entire ice age landscape recreated—to be able to see into the past and witness firsthand some portion of the twisted road that led to our here and now.