Palm grows from record 2000-year-old seed Ancient kernel found

 Palm Kernel Shell Scientists using radiocarbon dating have confirmed that a Judeandate palm seed found in the ruins of Masada and planted three yearsago is 2,000 years old - the oldest seed ever to germinate. The seed has grown into a healthy, 4-foot-tall seedling, surpassingthe previous record for oldest germinated seed - a 1,300-year-oldChinese lotus, researchers reported Thursday in the journalScience. The little tree has been named Methuselah after the oldest personin the Hebrew Bible. It is now the only living Judean date palm andthe last link to the date palm forests that once shaded andnourished the Middle Eastern region. Sarah Sallon, who directs the Louis L. Borick Natural MedicineResearch Center in Jerusalem, became interested in the ancient datepalm as a possible source of medicines. She enlisted Dr. ElaineSolowey of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at KibbutzKetura to coax the seeds out of dormancy. One sprouted. Scientists initially estimated its age at about 2,000years old based on carbon dating of other seeds found at the site,but they had no way of directly testing the planted seed withoutrisking its chance of survival. After the Methuselah seed germinated, Solowey found fragments ofthe seed shell clinging to the roots - enough for dating. The shell fragments initially dated to A.D. 295, give or take 50years, but a small percentage of "modern" carbon incorporated asthe seed germinated made it appear 250 to 300 years younger.Correcting for this factor, the researchers reported that the seeddates from 60 B.C. to A.D. 95, similar to the other seeds from thesite. That placed the seed at Masada, Israel, around the Roman siege inA.D. 73, when, according to the ancient historian Josephus, almost1,000 Jewish Zealots in the fortress committed mass suicide ratherthan capitulate to the Romans. They burned most of their foodstores, leaving a single cache to show that they did not starve todeath. "These people were eating these dates up on the mountain andlooking down at the Roman camp, knowing that they were going to diesoon, and spitting out the pits," Sallon said. "Maybe here is oneof those pits." Archaeologists excavating the fortress of Masada originallyunearthed the seeds in 1965, but they sat in storage for fourdecades before being planted. The seeds probably survived for so long because of the extremelyarid conditions of the Masada mesa, said Cary Fowler, seedpreservation expert and executive director of the Global CropDiversity Trust, which maintains the Svalbard Global Seed Vault inNorway.