For anyone wondering about previous precedents for reviving frozen multicellular creatures, here's my response to a now-deleted comment:<p>There are shorter-term examples of frogs [0] (up to a few years) and tardigrades [1] (30 years) but I haven't heard of anything on this timescale before.<p>[0]<a href="http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-alaskan-frozen-frogs-20140723-story.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-alaskan-...</a><p>[1]<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/18/10785002/water-bear-tardigrade-frozen-30-years-reproduction" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/18/10785002/water-bear-tardi...</a><p>Edit: formatting
<p><pre><code> > Some 300 prehistoric worms were analysed - and two ‘were shown to contain viable nematodes’.
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This sounds like 300 non-nematode worms were examined, and two of them contained viable nematodes as parasites. Is that correct? Because everything else in the article sounds like the nematodes <i></i>are<i></i> the worms, rather than <i></i>were in<i></i> the worms.<p>It's a tiny detail, but it's bugging me.
Nematodes are funny. I was curious, so I bought a simple inspection microscope and bought some agar plates with E.Coli on them. You can easily sample nematodes by cutting up rotting fruit and putting it on the edge of the plates. the nematodes will cruise out of the fruit and cruise around the E.Coli eating it, leaving tracks. Then you can make a worm pick, isolate and clean nematodes, and transfer them to other plates or slides for closer inspection.<p>Of all the model organisms, C. Elegans is far and away the most amazing.
Nematodes, which were revived here, were also the first cellular species which was found to survive deep in the earths crust - in a study which also featured one of the same Princeton researchers (T. C. Onstott [1]) collaborating with a different group of international researchers:<p>> "Nematode found in mine is first subsurface multicellular organism"<p>> Until now, it was thought that the temperature, energy, oxygen and space constraints of the subsurface biosphere were too extreme for multicellular organisms. [2]<p>This is interesting news but I'm curious if this will be largely limited to this unique type of (multicellular) organism which can survive extreme conditions?<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullis_Onstott" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullis_Onstott</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/science/07obworm.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/science/07obworm.html</a>
EDIT: It's legit. Thanks to the commenter below.<p>Can anyone in Russia confirm if this is a legit news story? It's being repeated throughout tabloids in the West all referencing this English language Siberian publication, as well as hordes of definite news apsm sites, all appear to be using the same generic images and verbetium or almost verbetium text.
What a shitty reporting: no reporter name, no scientist(s) name.
Coming from the country where secret services are known to fake urine samples from sportsmen...
I wouldn't take it at the face value...
Would these worms have been snap-frozen? I.e., they did not freeze slowly so that ice crystals did not form in their cells killing them. How would snap freezing work in these environments.
Genome sequencing of the progeny might show mutational biases during the frozen state (in the gonads, at least). It would probably be necessary to sequence an extant population to distinguish between population genetic changes (i.e., evolution) and mutation bias.
Also, reminds old x-files episode <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_(The_X-Files)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_(The_X-Files)</a> Hope mass rage has not started yet in Siberia.
So these are probably the oldest living organisms in existence then, huh? I'm not aware of anything that's older than 42000 years, but I'd be amazed to be wrong :)
What i find most interesting must be how this sort of creature came to be. It's "evolutionary strategy" must be to simply get frozen, only to get defrozen every thousand years or so, eat and procreate, then when the cold comes get frozen once more for even more years.<p>So, I just assume that this creature must've survived several hundreds of thousands of years by being frozen and only procreating when the earth becomes warm enough
Can anyone explain how the age of nematodes is confirmed to be 42,000 years from the age of deposits: The duration of natural cryopreservation of the nematodes corresponds to the age of the deposits, 30000–40000 years.
One thing that I have always worried about Antartic ice melting and unleashing some ancient black death like plague for which we dont have any immunity.
Hopefully the web server will come back to life in less time than that<p>Cached version at <a href="https://archive.is/b0WjK" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/b0WjK</a>