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The first-of-its-kind discovery, described as "a dream of many fiction writers," was a huge leap forward in understanding how specimens -- perhaps even humans -- can be preserved for generations. The bdelloid rotifer is awake – and we're going to need to buy some more birthday candles. For the past 24,000 years, the multicellular microorganism had been snoozing in Siberian permafrost, having become frozen in the Arctic ice right around the same time in history that humans first ventured into North America during the Upper Paleolithic era, otherwise known as the Late Stone Age. A bdelloid rotifer is a freshwater...

One of the revived rotifers. (Michael Plewka) For tens of thousands of years, a microscopic creature lay frozen and immobile underground in the Siberian permafrost. Yet, when scientists thawed it out, the tiny multicellular animal didn't just revive - it reproduced, suggesting that there is a mechanism whereby multicellular animals can avoid cell damage during the freezing process and wake up ready to rumble. "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," said biologist Stas Malavin of the Soil Cryology...

A tiny creature that has not had sex for 100 million years has overturned the theory that animals need to mate to create variety. Analysis of the jaw shapes of bdelloid rotifers, combined with genetic data, revealed that the animals have diversified under pressure of natural selection. Researchers say that their study “refutes the idea that sex is necessary for diversification into evolutionary species”. The microscopic animals, less than four times the length of a human sperm, are all female, yet have evolved into different species that fill different ecological niches. Two sister species were found to be living...