Frozen plants that were buried under glaciers for 400 years have been revived by scientists. The plants, a type of moss called bryophyte, regenerated nearly on their own - leading to important possible implications (e.g. how ecosystems recover after ice ages) and applications (e.g. outer space!).

The frozen bryophytes were buried and frozen for centuries, but required no special wizardry to regrow. They were under a glacier that is now receding (why would that be? Oh, right). Large areas of land that have been buried since the Little Ice Age, a widespread cooling that occurred from the 16^th to 19^th centuries, are now being exposed to light and air.

"We ended up walking along the edge of the glacier margin and we saw these huge populations coming out from underneath the glacier that seemed to have a greenish tint," said Catherine La Farge, the research group's lead author. A group from the University of Alberta exploring an area around the Teardrop Glacier in the Canadian Arctic made the discovery.

The rate of ice melt has accelerated exponentially since 2004, LaFrage said.

"The substantial glacial retreat is now revealing beautifully preserved vegetative communities. It's kind of like a blanket being pulled back, allowing you to see what the Little Ice Age was like," she said.

"When we looked at them in detail and brought them to the lab, I could see some of the stems actually had new growth of green lateral branches, and that said to me that these guys are regenerating in the field, and that blew my mind," she said.

They have found a host of different life forms under the glacier, including cyanobacteria and algae. Many of the species the team has discovered are totally new to science.

Bryophytes are non-vascular plants such as mosses. They reproduce asexually and provide homes for cyanobacteria and fungi. La Farge hopes that the discovery will spurn more interest in bryophytes, which are not widely studied.

"I think the whole biological system of bryophytes has not really been understood well," she said. Bryophytes seem to have an ability to shut down during harsh conditions and have return to a stem-cell-like state, then to regenerate.

This could have important applications for space travel. Scientists have already taken moss into space to see how it grows without gravity-but bryophytes could have terrestrial impact.

"Maybe astronauts would want to take bryophytes to other planets to see if they would grow and how they could modify extraterrestrial landscapes," La Farge told press.