Scientists resurrect functionally extinct animal frozen for 46,000 years

Scientists have revived microscopic animals from a slumber lasting some 46,000 years. Discovered in Siberian permafrost, researchers believe studying their evolution may show how species will adapt to a rapidly changing world.

Microscopic animals hailing from the same prehistoric era as Neanderthals and dire wolves are currently multiplying in a petri dish. Got the heebie-jeebies?

Also known as roundworms, the batch of nematodes were awoken from their paralysed state deep within the frozen permafrost of Siberia’s Kolyma River. Researchers have since ascertained through radiocarbon analysis that they’re 46,000 years old and belong to a functionally extinct species called Panagrolaimus Kolymaensis.

These stubborn little creatures are highly adaptable and have evolved the ability to survive freezing temperatures by entering a state of cryobiosis. This allows them to shut their metabolic systems off and lay dormant until favourable conditions return.

Despite having literally dozed through the final parts of the ice age and the subsequent rise of human civilisation, the nematodes didn’t require much coaxing to start wriggling around and multiplying under laboratory conditions.

Scientists have brought many organisms back to the land of the living from past millennia – including a bacterial species which lived close to 25 million years ago – but the latest survivors are said to be causing a real buzz in the biological world.