2,000-year-old seed may help restore a species of biblical trees

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2,000 year old seeds of Biblical Tree doing well
WASHINGTON - Just over three years old and about four-feet tall, Methuselah is growing well. “It’s lovely,” Dr. Sarah Sallon said of the date palm, whose parents may have provided food for the besieged Jews at Masada some 2,000 years ago.
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The little tree was sprouted in 2005 from a seed recovered from Masada, where rebelling Jews committed suicide rather than surrender to Roman attackers.
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To quote Bender from Futurama “Neat” 👍
 
the article:
She hopes there’s a chance to use it to restore the extinct Judean date palm, once prized not only for its fruit but also for medicinal uses.

The researchers have had a look at the plant’s DNA, however, and found it shares just over half its genes with modern date cultivars.
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It doesn’t sound likely that this plant can be reverse engineered into the Judean Date Palm, but with new techniques of genetic manipulation I suppose it may be possible. Do fragments of the extinct species exist?
 
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