Posted on 07/07/2019 1:23:38 PM PDT by BenLurkin
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, the nematodes that wriggled back to life were the most complex creatures ... ever revived after a lengthy deep freeze.
She estimated one nematode to be 41,000 years old — by far the oldest living animal ever discovered. This very worm dwelled in the soil beneath Neanderthals’ feet and had lived to meet modern-day humans in Vishnivetskaya’s high-tech laboratory.
When environmental conditions deteriorate, some nematode species can hunker down into a state of suspended animation called the dauer stage — dauer means duration in German — in which they forestall feeding and grow a protective coating that shields them from extreme conditions.
Vishnivetskaya is not sure whether the nematodes her team pulled from the permafrost passed the epochs in dauer stage. But she speculated that nematodes could theoretically survive indefinitely if frozen stably.
It is ecological gospel that some creatures — from birds to butterflies to wildebeest — survive by migrating vast and hazardous distances to find favorable habitat. More recent discoveries hint at a different migratory mode: through time.
After protracted slumber in Earth’s icy fringes, bacteria, moss and nematodes are awakening in a new geologic epoch. And for these paragons of endurance, the weather is just right.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
*ping*
Joe Biden woke up from his nap?
(heads at one end and) anuses at the other end....?????
those heads at one end are really tragic!......, these Old Worms are clearly over-qualified to be D candidates!
These kind of findings have led to speculations that microbial life might survive in space frozen on some rocky chunk of planetary debris and then survive a fiery plunge to the surface of a planet. The theory has been used as a theory of how the earth might have been “seeded” from space. Its just a theory, not my proposal.
What could possibly go wrong?...
“Vishnivetskaya ... has coaxed million-year-old bacteria back to life on a petri dish. “
How many sci-fi horror flicks have started off this way?
The Blob lives.
Time for a new pandemic.
...Ancient life awakens amid thawing ice caps and permafrost..
Thinking zombie makers.
“Clocking in at a half-millimeter long...”
No kidding? Did they measure 4 seconds fast too?
see the movie Evolution.
Corny, campy but acceptable Doug McClure movie.
Corny, campy but acceptable Doug McClure movie.
Lol! Don’t forget the sequel, The People That Time Forgot!
Next up will be, The Movie That People Forgot!
Seriously, I think they’re fun, those old Sci-Fi flicks. I liked it too. And there really was a sequel, The People That Time Forgot. Came out a couple of years later in ‘77.
Here it is in full at YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYxzlXpTbE8
The sequel wasn’t that bad.
What can go wrong?
I recall that the movie ‘Smilla’s Sense of Snow’ featured prehistoric arctic worms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smilla%27s_Sense_of_Snow_(film)
There was also an x-files episode I think.
Freegards
One word: “hunger”.
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