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Scientists Resurrect 40,000-Year-Old Worms Buried In Ice (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Earlier this month, in the journal Doklady Biological Sciences, a team of Russian scientists announced they had apparently discovered ancient nematode worms that were able to resurrect themselves after spending at least 32,000 years buried in permafrost. The discovery, if legitimate, would represent the longest-surviving return from the cold ever seen in a complex, multi-celled organism, dwarfing even the tardigrade. The worms were found among more than 300 samples of frozen soil pulled from the Kolyma River Lowlands in Northeastern Siberia by the researchers. Two of the samples held the worms, with one from a buried squirrel burrow dating back 32,000 years and one from a glacier dating back 40,000 years. After isolating intact nematodes, the scientists kept the samples at 68 degrees Fahrenheit and left them surrounded by food in a petri dish, just to see what would happen. Over the next few weeks, they gradually spotted flickers of life as the worms ate the food and even cloned new family members. These cloned worms were then cultured separately, and they too thrived.
I was recently fortunate to have an extraordinarily cute, 20-something science student resurrect a 53-year-old worm buried in her....um, never mind.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Good luck resurrecting an auroch or a Bali tiger. These worms were merely hibernating.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
It tells us things about how long life could potentially travel through space. It is a bit hard to run a lab-experiment for 40'000 years...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'm not sure what your point is. The number of times I talk about phase transitions of water - pretty low. And then I really only care if there may be ice on the road. Number of times I pay attention to the outside weather, or the thermostat, pretty often.
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Good luck resurrecting an auroch or a Bali tiger. These worms were merely hibernating.
They should try resurrecting the Jurassic Blue parrot . . . it's just resting . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!