Researchers have coaxed a 2000-year-old seed into germinating. The result: a happy, healthy date palm tentatively named ‘Methuselah’. It’s an impressive feat, and surpasses the record previously held by a 1300-year-old lotus seed found in the bed of an ancient Chinese lake. All in all, I’ve come to realize that my jubilation at germinating my five-year-old arugula seeds this spring was perhaps a touch overenthusiastic.

National Geographic had this three years ago, but today’s media flurry is in response to a paper published in Science this week. Some of my favorite highlights from today’s coverage: New Scientist refers to it as a ‘Jesus-era seed’, and the LA Times gets the researchers to speculate on how the seed ended up buried in the ruins of a Herodian fortress overlooking the Dead Sea. “These people were eating these dates up on the mountain and looking down at the Roman camp, knowing that they were going to die soon, and spitting out the pits," study author Sarah Sallon of the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center in Jerusalem told the LA Times. “Maybe here is one of those pits.”

So how do these seeds manage to last so long, emerging triumphant after centuries of background radiation and exposure to harsh weather? Sallon and her colleagues suspect that the dry heat of the Dead Sea region may have played a role. Others have postulated (for instance here and here) that the lotus seeds might be especially good at resisting the DNA-damaging effects of radiation. And for a fun and more conceptual take on the issue, check out Olivia Judson’s recent blog entry on mutations and natural variation. (She gets to the lotus bit towards the end, but the whole column is worth a read.)

Photo by Guy Eisner / Courtesy of Science Magazine