Chorisodontium aciphyllum facts for kids

Chorisodontium aciphyllum is a special type of moss that mostly grows near the Drake Passage. This passage is a body of water between South America and Antarctica. This amazing moss has a unique ability called cryptobiosis. This means it can enter a "paused" state where its body processes almost stop. This allows it to survive for a very long time, even for hundreds or thousands of years!

About This Amazing Moss

Chorisodontium aciphyllum grows in thick layers along the coast of Antarctica, especially in the Drake Passage area. You can also find it in places like Argentina, Chile, New Zealand, and South Georgia. As these moss layers grow taller, the parts deep down don't get sunlight. They turn brown and become part of the frozen ground, called permafrost. These moss mounds can grow to be over 9 feet (2.7 m) tall!

This moss was first described in 1844 by Joseph Dalton Hooker and William M. Wilson. They called it Dicranum aciphyllum. Later, in 1924, a scientist named Viktor Ferdinand Brotherus gave it its current name, Chorisodontium aciphyllum.

How Moss Can "Pause" Life

In 2014, scientists made an incredible discovery about C. aciphyllum. A terrestrial ecologist named Peter Convey and his team found that this moss can come back to life after being frozen for more than 1500 years!

The team took samples of the moss from Signy Island in Antarctica. They used a special drill to get a long piece of moss, like a core sample. This core was about 4.5-foot (1.4 m) long. Back in the lab, they cut the core into smaller 8-inch (20 cm) sections.

They then gave these moss sections light and the right temperature, just like where the moss naturally grows. After a few weeks, new green growth appeared! This showed that the moss was still alive, even after being frozen for so long. The deepest, oldest part of the moss sample was dated using radio-carbon dating. This method showed it was between 1,533 and 1,697 years old.

Before this discovery, scientists thought that multi-celled organisms could only survive in this "paused" state, called cryptobiosis, for a few decades. They knew that tiny things like bacteria could do it for longer. No moss had ever been known to survive more than 20 years frozen. However, there was a case where moss stems frozen for 400 years under a glacier started to grow again when put in petri dishes. Also, in 2012, scientists managed to bring back 31,000-year-old seeds of a plant called Silene stenophylla using special cloning methods. The discovery about C. aciphyllum shows just how tough life can be!