They’re alive! 46,000 Year-Old Roundworms Revived From Siberian Permafrost@TheCosmosNews

#thecosmosnews Tiny roundworms that were frozen for 46,000 years in the Siberian permafrost are wriggling once again. Laila Harrak speaks with Teymuras Kurzchalia of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics.At a time when the mighty woolly mammoth roamed the Earth, some 46,000 years ago, a minuscule pair of roundworms became encased in the Siberian permafrost.

Millennia later, the worms, thawed out of the ice, would wriggle again, and demonstrate to scientists that life could be paused — almost indefinitely.

The discovery, published this week in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS Genetics, offers new insight into how the worms, also known as nematodes, can survive in extreme conditions for extraordinarily long periods of time, in this case tens of thousands of years.

In 2018, Anastasia Shatilovich, a scientist from the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science RAS in Russia, thawed two female worms from a fossilized burrow dug by gophers in the Arctic.

The worms, which were buried approximately 130 feet in the permafrost, were revived simply by putting them in water, according to a news release from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany.

Called Panagrolaimus kolymaensis, after the Kolyma River in Russia, where they were found, the worms were sent to Germany for further study. The creatures, which have a life span measured in days, died after reproducing several generations in the lab, researchers said.

Using radiocarbon dating, researchers determined the specimens were frozen between 45,839 and 47,769 years ago, during the late Pleistocene.

[RileyTheMonster]

Don't they mean renewed, not newly? It was already alive long ago they just brought it back.

[nistalicnoblank]

If two female worms were reanimated how did they reproduce?

[feligv]

Messing with nature got us Covid. Our hubris never ends.