Russian scientists found the creature in a frozen ground core extracted from the Siberian ice sheet using a drilling rig.
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“Our report is the hardest evidence to date that multicellular animals can survive for tens of thousands of years in cryptobiosis, a state of almost completely stalled metabolism,” said Stas Malavin, a researcher at the Cryology Laboratory at the Pushchino Scientific Center for Biological Research in Russia. quoted by CNN.
Research previously by another group showed that rotifers can last up to 10 years when frozen.
In a new study in the journal Current Biology, Russian researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine that the creatures they found from permafrost were about 24,000 years old.
This is not the first time ancient life has been resurrected from permanently frozen habitats. Antarctic moss stalks were successfully regrown from a 1,000-year-old sample that had been covered in ice for about 400 years.
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Nematode worms have been brought back to life from ice sheets from two places in northeastern Siberia, in sediments that are more than 30,000 years old.
Long -dead but well -preserved mammals, including cave bears and extinct mammals, have also been excavated from the ice sheet, which is melting in some places as a result of the climate crisis.
Malavin said it was highly unlikely that any larger life form could survive being frozen this way. “Multicellular organisms can be frozen and stored like that for thousands of years and then come back to life,” Malavin said.
To understand how the creature survives in a state of extinction in frozen ground, para scientist freeze and thaw modern rotifers that live in permafrost areas. They discovered that the creatures could resist the formation of ice crystals as they slowly solidified.
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While not all rotifers survive the freezing process, research shows that the creatures possess several mechanisms that can protect their cells and organs from harm at very low temperatures.
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