By Josie August 4th, 2023
A worm was astonishingly revived after spending 46,000 years in the Siberian permafrost.
The roundworm was found 130 feet below the surface in the Siberian permafrost, frozen in time for over 46,000 years.
The finding was made by scientists from the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science in Russia.
One of the scientists took around 100 of these ancient worms to labs in Germany for further analysis.
They were able to revive the worm as it had been in a state of cryptobiosis, an extraordinary biological phenomenon.
During cryptobiosis an organism’s metabolic activities come to a halt, allowing them to withstand the most extreme conditions.
The revival of the worm has provided valuable insights into the process of cryptobiosis, and may open doors to understanding how life can be halted and then restarted.
Scientists used radiocarbon dating - a method that measures the amount of carbon-14 in a sample to calculate its age.
Let's take a look at some other animals that romaed the earth at that time:
The worm had remained in a dormant state since the late Pleistocene period.
They had thick shaggy hair, curved tusks and a hump of fat on its back to store energy.
Unlike modern sloths, the Giant Ground Sloth was a terrestrial animal that could stand on its hind legs to reach tall vegetation.