Scientists relaunched 42,000-year-old frozen roundworms and they quickly woke up and started eating

Cryopreservation is something we see a lot in sci-fi movies, where people are frozen in stasis for hundreds or thousands of years to stay alive. Now, it seems that scientists have found evidence of this fascinating process that occurs naturally in nature.

A group of scientists in Russia claim to have succeeded in reviving two frozen nematodes, roundworms. years. A specimen was found in a soil sample taken from a terrestrial squirrel burrow at 100 feet underground, estimated to be around 32,000 years old. A second nematode was recovered from a permafrost sample located only 11 feet below the surface, presumably about 41,700 years old.

The samples were stored in a laboratory at about -20 degrees Celsius. The isolated nematodes were then warmed to about 20 degrees C and surrounded by food. After several weeks, scientists say that roundworms have begun to show signs of life, movement and eating. "Thus, our data demonstrate the ability of multicellular organisms to survive long-term (tens of thousands of years) cryobiosis under natural cryopreservation conditions," the researchers said in a study.

Previous studies have shown that some nematode species can survive in extreme environments, such as living in subfreezing temperatures for 25 years and even 39 years of extreme dehydration. However, it is the first time that the hypothesis has been proven on such a mbadive time scale

"Theoretically, it is possible that if organisms are protected against physical damage that would compromise their structural integrity during frozen confinement, they should be able to recover after defrosting / rehydration during for very long periods of time Robin Giblin-Davis, director of the Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center at the University of Florida, told Gizmodo . researchers say their results could be skewed if these old samples are significantly different from modern nematodes and similar organisms.

The reason these samples remained frozen is because the seasonal thaw would not have reached the depth which they were buried in. And if they can learn enough about how these creatures evolved, we could we have the key we need to apply cryopreservation to humans in the distant future.

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