This animal survived 24,000 years frozen in the Siberian permafrost

[Nevilledog]

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Tweet text:
Khashoggi’s Ghost
@UROCKlive1
A microscopic animal has been revived after slumbering in the Arctic permafrost for 24,000 years.

The buried critical point here is that after being thawed and brought back to life, this thing has now reproduced.

Really, what could go wrong?

This animal survived 24,000 years frozen in the Siberian permafrost
A microscopic animal has come back to life after slumbering in the Arctic permafrost for 24,000 years.
cnn.com
8:19 PM · Jun 7, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/07/europe/bdelloid-rotifers-animal-survive-frozen-in-permafrost-scn/index.html

(CNN) — A microscopic animal has been revived after slumbering in the Arctic permafrost for 24,000 years.

Bdelloid rotifers typically live in watery environments and have an incredible ability to survive. Russian scientists found the creatures in a core of frozen soil extracted from the Siberian permafrost using a drilling rig.

"Our report is the hardest proof as of today that multicellular animals could withstand tens of thousands of years in cryptobiosis, the state of almost completely arrested metabolism," said Stas Malavin, a researcher at the Soil Cryology Laboratory at the Pushchino Scientific Center for Biological Research in Russia.

Earlier research by other groups had shown that the rotifers could survive up to 10 years when frozen. In a new study, the Russian researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine that the critters they recovered from the permafrost -- ground that is frozen year-round, apart from a thin layer near the surface -- were about 24,000 years old.

*snip*

[Bayard]

1. Wasn't this an X-files episode?

[Demovictory9]

11. or a SYFY movie...back when that channel actually showed syfy movies

[alittlelark]

2. Sounds like the start of an 'extinction event' movie.

[dweller]

3. Ok ... Welp ... that's it for me, heading to bed now

sweet dreams everyone

😱


✌🏻

[Baitball Blogger]

4. As if, "Covid escaped from a lab," wasn't enough to get our attention.

Really, the last week has normalized the rabbit hole.

Aliens, lab generated virus, and now this.

[tiredtoo]

5. 24,000 years

Are you sure? Picture doesn't look a day over 23,000 to me.

[denbot]

6. We. Are. Fucked.

Time for a bong hit.

[WarGamer]

7. More evidence of Panspermia.

We are pretty much SURE that water appeared on Earth because asteroid Vesta research showed water on Earth had the same isotope composition as Vesta, thus outer space water. The Rosetta experiments state that ~10% of Earth water came from asteroids/comets.

So at one time the Earth was pelted with big fat juicy frozen comets and asteroids or Martian chunks.

It's a small step to theorize that microorganisms were in the permafrost.

Harvard researchers agree..

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.04307.pdf

[Captain Zero]

8. Ahhh, he is so cute...

[iemanja]

9. I saw a TV show about this

It didn't end well.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3498622/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_30

[ansible]

10. 24k years is nothing, spores millions of years old can still reproduce

Life is insanely resilient and will go on and on long before and after us

[MineralMan]

12. It's a rotifer. Rotifers pose no risk to humans.

They are fun to observe, though, though a stereo microscope in a water droplet.

[Klaralven]

13. They are fascinating. I never understood how the little wheel-like structures actually rotate

In high school biology, I did several hay infusion experiments inoculated with central Minnesota marsh water.

They resulted in a wide range of protozoans. Rotifers and other multi-cellular animals appeared fairly late in the progression.

[MineralMan]

14. I started watching tiny water creatures at about age 10, when

I got my first microscope. I didn't get a stereo scope, though for decades. I could amuse myself for hours with a small sample of pond water taken near the edge of the water.

Nothing really rotates, though. It's rings of cilia that move in a pattern that simulates rotation. It's all too fast to observe clearly with the eye, even with a microscope. I think there are some slow-motion videos of it. I've posted one below that shows it:

Absolutely fascinating stuff. 20-40x is best. More depth of field. There are very affordable stereo microscopes from China now for sale on amazon and ebay. They work great, and are much less costly than a professional model from one of the major optical companies.

I had a great Bausch and Lomb zoom model I bought at a university surplus auction. Actually, bought a lot of 10. I made mine from the best of the parts in that 10 and then sold six more that were very nice on eBay.

[Klaralven]

15. One of the more fascinating infusions was one that turned green with euglena

At the time we thought of them as protozoa with chloroplasts, although they now seem to be classified in their own phylum. They combine features of the plant and animal kingdoms.

My biology teacher ate lunch in his classroom and allowed students to also eat there and use the microscopes, etc, during lunch hour.

[MineralMan]

16. My parents were sure I'd end up as a scientist, so they gave me

lots of fun stuff when I was a child. I might have ended up in the sciences, but did not, in the end. However, I never lost my interest, and continued to learn all through my life, particularly in littoral environments. I was always interested in creatures that didn't attract much research, since they weren't useful or harmful to human endeavors.

Occasionally, I even discovered things that were undescribed in any references I could find. When I did, I'd write brief reports or letters and share them with others. A couple even appeared in journals, like my discovery of one small tidal goby with an uncanny ability to match colors and patterns in its body colors, which it could change in just seconds. That, I documented with photos, demonstrating that it could even duplicate a grid pattern on its body when placed on a background with a grid. Not useful in its environment, but it illustrated just how effective that camouflage strategy was. My letter, with photos, ended up in a small journal.

Nobody really studied those gobies. They were too small, and had no significance to people. That's why amateur naturalists have made many contributions to science.

[yellowcanine]

17. Not much could go wrong. It is a rotifer.

Not exactly a threat to other life forms.