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Scientists discovered a female microscopic roundworm that has been stuck deep in Siberian permafrost for 46,000 years, The Washington Post reported. When they revived it, the worm started having babies via a process called parthenogenesis, which doesn't require a mate. According to a press release, the worm spent thousands of years in a type of dormancy called cryptobiosis. In that state, which can last almost indefinitely, all metabolic processes pause, including "reproduction, development, and repair," the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa reported. In a study published Thursday in the journal PLOS Genetics, scientists reported that after sequencing the worm's genome,...

...Permafrost covers a fifth of the Northern Hemisphere, having underpinned the Arctic tundra and boreal forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia for millennia. It serves as a kind of time capsule, preserving ... ancient viruses. \ ...The virus hunter Claverie studies a particular type of virus he first discovered in 2003.... / ...In 2014, he managed to revive a virus he and his team isolated from the permafrost, making it infectious for the first time in 30,000 years by inserting it into cultured cells. ... Precedent for human infection Traces of viruses and bacteria that can infect humans have been...

When considering the implications of thawing permafrost, our initial worries are likely to turn to the major issue of methane being released into the atmosphere and exacerbating global warming or issues for local communities as the ground and infrastructure become unstable. While this is bad enough, new research reveals that the potential effects of permafrost thaw could also pose serious health threats. As part of the ESA–NASA Arctic Methane and Permafrost Challenge, new research has revealed that rapidly thawing permafrost in the Arctic has the potential to release antibiotic-resistant bacteria, undiscovered viruses and even radioactive waste from Cold War nuclear...

RNA -- the short-lived transcripts of genes -- from the "Tumat puppy", a wolf of the Pleistocene era has been isolated, and its sequence analyzed in a new study by Oliver Smith of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues publishing on July 30 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. The results establish the possibility of examining a range of RNA transcripts from ancient organisms, a possibility previously thought to be extremely unlikely because of the short lifespan of RNA. DNA, which encodes the "hard copy" of genes, is known to survive for thousands of years under favourable conditions. But RNA...

The hunters searching for mammoth tusks were drawn to the steep riverbank by a deposit of ancient bones. To their astonishment, they discovered an Ice Age puppy’s snout peeking out from the permafrost. Five years later, a pair of puppies perfectly preserved in Russia’s far northeast region of Yakutia and dating back 12,460 years has mobilised scientists across the world. “To find a carnivorous mammal intact with skin, fur and internal organs - this has never happened before in history,” said Sergei Fyodorov, head of exhibitions at the Mammoth Museum of the North-Eastern Federal University in the regional capital of...

Scientists in the Russian Far East have carried out a post-mortem examination of the remains of the only mummified dog ever found in the world. Found sealed inside permafrost during a hunt for traces of woolly mammoths, the perfectly-preserved body is 12,450 years old. The dog, believed to be a three-month-old female, was unearthed in 2011 on the Syallakh River in the Ust-Yana region of Yakutia, also known as the Sakha Republic. Experts spent the past four years analysing the body – which included not just bones but also its heart, lungs and stomach – but only carried out the...

Vishnivetskaya ... has coaxed million-year-old bacteria back to life on a petri dish. They look “very similar to bacteria you can find in cold environments [today],” she said. But last year, Vishnivetskaya’s team announced an “accidental finding” — one with a brain and nervous system — that shattered scientists’ understanding of extreme endurance. They placed the frozen material on petri dishes in their room-temperature lab and noticed something strange. Hulking among the puny bacteria and amoebae were long, segmented worms complete with a head at one end and anus at the other — nematodes. Clocking in at a half-millimeter long,...

Scientists are analyzing the perfectly preserved remains of a prehistoric horse in a bid to clone the now-extinct animal. Recently discovered in permafrost in the Siberian region of Yakutia, the skin, hair, hooves and tail of the carcass are all preserved. The remains are estimated to be 30,000 to 40,000 years old. Experts believe that the foal was about 2 months old when it died. Semyon Grigoryev, head of the Mammoth Museum in the regional capital of Yakutsk, was surprised to see the perfect state of the find. He noted it's the best-preserved ancient foal found to date. The Siberian...

© North-Eastern Federal University ==================================================================== A three-month-old horse that lived up to 40,000 years ago has been discovered in the mysterious Batagai depression in Russia’s Yakutia region, nicknamed the ‘Gateway to the Underworld.’ The North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk published the first photo of the “unique” discovery, which was made together with scientists from Kindai University in Japan along with a crew from Fuji TV. The horse was unearthed in perfect condition with its mane, tail and hair well preserved, as it was trapped in the permafrost for 30,000-40,000 years, scientists say. The discovery can help scientists to learn...

Scientists have uncovered another hidden threat buried in the icy frozen north—massive natural reserves of mercury, a toxic heavy metal that in some forms can build up in fish and other animals and cause serious health problems in humans. A study published Monday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters reports that the amount of natural mercury bound up in Arctic permafrost may be 10 times greater than all the mercury humans have pumped into the atmosphere from coal-burning and other pollution sources over the last 30 years. As climate change warms the land, this thawing permafrost could release significant quantities...

A doorway to 200,000 years ago. It's no secret that Siberia's permafrost has been on thin ice lately. Conditions are varying so much that huge holes are appearing out of nowhere, and, in some places, tundra is quite literally bubbling underneath people's feet. But new research has revealed that one of the biggest craters in the region, known by the local Yakutian people as the 'doorway to the underworld', is growing so rapidly that it's uncovering long-buried forests, carcasses, and up to 200,000 years of historical climate records. Known as the Batagaika crater, it's what's officially called a 'megaslump' or...

<p>FOX, Alaska -- Ten miles north of Fairbanks, along a man-made valley cleared by industrial gold dredgers in the early 1900s, a small red building at the base of a hill provides a portal to the geologic history of central Alaska.</p>

Guest essay by Don EasterbrookA crater in northern Siberia, spotted by a passing helicopter, has received worldwide attention and continues to be a top news story. Since then, two more mysterious holes have been discovered elsewhere in the region. Now the new holes, smaller in diameter but similar in shape – are posing a fresh challenge for Russian scientists, according to the The Siberian Times. Theories range from meteorites to an explosion of methane due to global warming.Figure 1. Yamal ‘mystery crater.’ (Siberian Times)Anna Kurchatova of the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre said the crater was formed by a mixture of...

AOL News (March 4) -- Scientists have uncovered a powerful source of a leading greenhouse gas that is venting into the atmosphere at unprecedented rates. The permafrost beneath the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, a relatively shallow section of the Arctic Ocean, has been pumping 7.7 million tons of methane into the air each year -- roughly the amount released into the atmosphere by the rest of the world's oceans combined. The researchers, who report their work in the March 5 issue of Science, caution that their findings in this previously unstudied region raise more questions than answers. The amount of...

DNA analysis of human hair preserved in Greenland's permafrost has given clues as to what the owner looked like. A study, published in the journal Nature, says the individual's genome is the oldest to have been sequenced from a modern human. The researchers say the man, who lived 4,000 years ago, had brown eyes and thick dark hair, although he would have been prone to baldness. They say the genome also shows that his ancestors migrated from Siberia. The man has been named Inuk, which means "human" in the Greenlandic language.

The media is chock full with articles of scientists, environmentalists and Carbon Billionaires (Al Gore) – stating how mankind is destroying the planet with our use of fossil fuels and other contaminents. The fact that industry is causing ecological and environmental damage is without doubt, but are we really the cause of the high greenhouse gas levels, or should we be more concerned with natural causes such as melting permafrost. We also take a look at why the ex Leader of Greenpeace lied on national television regarding Arctic ice disappearance and then defended the fact that Greenpeace had released inaccurately...

MACKENZIE RIVER DELTA, Northwest Territories – Only a squawk from a sandhill crane broke the Arctic silence — and a low gurgle of bubbles, a watery whisper of trouble repeated in countless spots around the polar world. "On a calm day, you can see 20 or more `seeps' out across this lake," said Canadian researcher Rob Bowen, sidling his small rubber boat up beside one of them. A tossed match would have set it ablaze. "It's essentially pure methane." Pure methane, gas bubbling up from underwater vents, escaping into northern skies, adds to the global-warming gases accumulating in the atmosphere....

BELIZE CITY (Reuters) - Collapsing bridges, bursting sewer pipes and crumbling roads caused by global warming could cost Alaska up to $10 billion over the next few decades, researchers said. Atmospheric temperatures in the northernmost U.S. state have risen by more than 3 degrees Fahrenheit (around 2 degrees Celsius) over the past five decades, Peter Larsen, a resource economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage, told a climate change conference in the Central American country of Belize. Larsen led a study with a team of engineers to calculate how Alaska will cope with the highest temperatures it has experienced in...

Ancient 'warrior' found in permafrostFrom correspondents in Moscow January 10, 2007 11:48pm RUSSIAN archaeologists have uncovered the 2000-year-old remains of a warrior preserved intact in permafrost in the Altai mountains region, the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily says. The warrior was blond had tattoos on his body. He was wearing a felt coat with sable fur trimmings and was buried in a wooden frame containing drawings of mythological creatures with an icepick beside him, the paper said. Local archaeologists believe the man was part of the ruling elite of a local nomadic tribe known as the Pazyryk. Numerous other Pazyryk tombs...

WASHINGTON - Global warming gases trapped in the soil are bubbling out of the thawing permafrost in amounts far higher than previously thought and may trigger what researchers warn is a climate time bomb. Methane — a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — is being released from the permafrost at a rate five times faster than thought, according to a study being published Thursday in the journal Nature. The findings are based on new, more accurate measuring techniques. "The effects can be huge," said lead author Katey Walter of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks said....