Worms frozen in permafrost for 42,000 years are brought back to life | MNN

Finding well preserved ancient animals in the thawing permafrost is not so rare in Siberia. For example, woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos and cave lions were found remarkably intact, as if they were frozen in time. But when these woolly mammoths thaw, they do not begin to walk.

So you could imagine scientists' surprise when a couple of ancient nematode worms suddenly began to wriggle shortly after being thawed from Siberian permafrost that had been frozen for tens of thousands of years.

"After being thawed, nematodes showed signs of life," said a report that was detailed later in the Siberian Times. "They started moving and eating."

One would imagine that they would be hungry after not having eaten since the Pleistocene.

Scientists from a laboratory of the Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science in Moscow were examining samples of prehistoric worms containing permafrost when the resurrections took place. Of the approximately 300 worms examined in the study, only two were relaunched. Yet, it is an extraordinary event. One of the worms was found in permafrost dated about 32,000 years ago, while the other was thawed from a frozen ground 42,000 years old.

Needless to say, the moment these worms began to wiggle, they became the oldest known living animals on Earth. The last time they wriggled in the ground, it could have been under the footsteps of a woolly mammoth.

"It is evident that this ability suggests that Pleistocene nematodes have mechanisms of adaptation that may be of scientific and practical importance for related scientific fields, such as cryomedicine, cryobiology and the like. astrobiology ".

This is the first time that multicellular creatures of any kind have been shown able to survive such frozen periods in suspended animation. Studying the mechanisms that allowed these verses to survive could change many of our theories about the types of worlds where extraterrestrial life might exist. We could even make breakthroughs in cryogenics

. At the very least, the discovery is a scary reminder that when global warming sets in and the permafrost melts, these worms may not arrive alone. Who knows what other strange creatures might come crawling out of the thaw.