 Zias also questioned whether as many as 24 individuals were present, since only 4% of that number of bones was recovered.A 2,000-year-old Judean date palm seed discovered during archaeological excavations in the early 1960s was successfully germinated into a date plant, popularly known as "Methuselah" after the longest-living figure in the Hebrew Bible.At the time, it was the oldest known germination, remaining so until a new record was set in 2012.