WIKIMEDIA, US FWS, DEAN BIGGINS
In the Selwyn Mountains of Canada’s Northwest Territories, caribou have sought summer refuge from biting insects on ice patches for thousands of years. Scientists from the University of California, San Francisco, sampled ice cores from the region, in which they discovered an ancient virus in the frozen caribou feces. The virus, which is thought to be about 700 years old, is similar to present-day geminiviruses that infect plants, the researchers reported this week (October 27) in PNAS.
“The find confirms that virus particles are very good ‘time capsules’ that preserve their core genomic material, making it likely that many prehistoric viruses are still infectious to plants, animals or humans,” Jean-Michel Claverie of the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine in France told New Scientist. “This again ...
