Revived 40,000-year-old worms of Siberian permafrost

After collecting and analyzing more than 300 samples of permafrost deposits, the team discovered that two of them contained viable specimens of soil nematodes (worms). One of these samples was taken from a terrestrial squirrel burrow in the Duvanny Yar outcrop, which has already been dated to radiocarbon about 32,000 years ago. The second sample was a core of ice drilled from an ice deposit near the Alazeya River, which is approximately 41,700 years old.