Prior research documented the resuscitation of another microscopic creature called a nematode worm thought to have spent between 32,000 and 42,000 years frozen in Siberia, reports Mindy Weisberger for Live Science. However, while 24,000 years is an awfully long time, this rotifer isn’t the oldest organism to be brought back to life after millennia on ice. Researchers confirmed the rotifer’s advanced age by radiocarbon dating the surrounding soil. The team found the organism in permafrost cores drilled 11.5 feet deep near the Alazeya River in Siberia. “We revived animals that saw woolly mammoths, which is quite impressive,” Malavin tells the Times. "Our report is the hardest proof as of today that multicellular animals could withstand tens of thousands of years in cryptobiosis, the state of almost completely arrested metabolism," says Stas Malavin, a researcher at Russia’s Soil Cryology Laboratory at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science and co-author of the research, in a statement. But this new study, published this week in the journal Current Biology, sets the bar even higher. Like tardigrades or water bears, rotifers are renowned for their toughness in the face of radiation, extreme cold, dehydration and low oxygen levels, reports George Dvorsky for Gizmodo. Rotifers look a bit like translucent worms and tend to inhabit freshwater or moist soils. The wiggling, microscopic critter was even able to reproduce, despite having spent tens of thousands of years in a deep freeze of around 14 degrees Fahrenheit. ![]() Scientists were able to revive a tiny, multicellular animal called a bdelloid rotifer that had been frozen in the Siberian permafrost for 24,000 years, reports Marion Renault for the New York Times.
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