Mosses survive climate catastrophes
Monday, September 15, 2014 - 08:31
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Mosses have existed on Earth for more than 400 million years. During this period they survived many climate catastrophes that wiped out more robust organisms such as, for example, dinosaurs. Recently, British scientists brought single moss plants back to life after they had been frozen in the Antarctic ice for 1,500 years. Why are these small plants so resilient to climate changes? The biologists Professor Ralf Reski and Professor Peter Beyer and their teams discovered that mosses have specific genes that are activated quickly at low temperatures.