A 46,000-year-old gopher hole in Siberia served as a time capsule for some very old plant material and a small nematode roundworm, which was later revived, according to a new study.
Researchers from the Soil Cryology Lab in Russia extracted the contents of the hole from Duvanny Yar outcrop in Siberia, a sheer wall of prehistoric sediments. Ancient rodents had dug the burrow, about 10 inches wide, during the Last Ice Age, and cold temperatures had since frozen it into permafrost that never thaws.
The scientists took the frozen sediment back to the lab, began to thaw it out, and were surprised to witness the nematode crawl out on its own, as if nothing had happened. While the worm resembled Caenorhabditis elegans, a model nematode used in countless experiments, the researchers found important differences and declared the ancient worm a new species: Panagrolaimus kolymaensis.
Ancient animals or bacteria revived after ...
