Member-only story
It’s not the first time that creatures have thawed from melting glaciers with Lazarus-like abilities. Worms are remarkably resilient to harsh environments, surviving in anything from sub-artic conditions to super-heated ocean pockets next to deep water volcanic vents. Some can even withstand radiation, drying, low oxygen and starvation, often by voluntarily shutting down their biological functions until they are suspended in a form of stasis.
What is more extraordinary is that some species, such as the dbelloid rotifers, flourished for millions of years without the need for sex. These multicellular organisms clone themselves to reproduce, creating exact copies of the original without ever swapping DNA with another worm. You’d think with such a narrow gene pool, the species would be ill-equipped to navigate the changing landscape and environmental conditions over the past few millennia, but these microscopic worms just go on living and reproducing for years after thawing from the permafrost.
In terms of genetics, it could be said that the worms that Stas Malavin and his colleagues from the Soil Cryology Laboratory in Pushchino, Russia, revived from Siberian permafrost recently, were the very same ones living 35 million years ago. Even if these revelations take us one step closer to understanding how cryostasis works without fracturing the internal, albeit primitive organs inside, how do these invertebrates fit into Darwinian theories of evolution?