Scientists Revive Ancient Worm , Frozen For Tens of Thousands of Years.<br />CNN reports that scientists have <br />revived a 46,000-year-old worm found <br />frozen in the Siberian permafrost. .<br />CNN reports that scientists have <br />revived a 46,000-year-old worm found <br />frozen in the Siberian permafrost. .<br />The previously unknown species of roundworm, which lived <br />at a time when wooly mammoths still roamed the Earth, <br />survived far below the surface of the permafrost.<br />The previously unknown species of roundworm, which lived <br />at a time when wooly mammoths still roamed the Earth, <br />survived far below the surface of the permafrost.<br />According to Teymuras Kurzchalia, the worm <br />survived in a dormant state known as cryptobiosis. .<br />Kurzchalia, a professor emeritus at the Max Planck <br />Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, <br />says the crytobiotic state is "between life and death.".<br />Cryptobiosis allows an organism to survive the <br />complete absence of water or oxygen and even <br />withstand extreme heat or freezing temperatures.<br />According to Kurzchalia, previous <br />research into cryptobiosis saw organisms <br />revived after decades rather than millennia.<br />CNN reports that radiocarbon analysis established that <br />the deposits where the worms were found had last <br />been thawed between 45,839 and 47,769 years ago.<br />To see that the same biochemical <br />pathway is used in a species which <br />is 200, 300 million years away, <br />that’s really striking, Philipp Schiffer, Research group leader of the Institute <br />of Zoology at the University of Cologne, via CNN.<br />It means that some processes in <br />evolution are deeply conserved, Philipp Schiffer, Research group leader of the Institute <br />of Zoology at the University of Cologne, via CNN.<br />By looking at and analyzing these <br />animals, we can maybe inform conservation <br />biology, or maybe even develop efforts to <br />protect other species, or at least learn <br />what to do to protect them in these <br />extreme conditions that we have now, Philipp Schiffer, Research group leader of the Institute <br />of Zoology at the University of Cologne, via CNN
