Tardigrades might be the most well-known quasi-indestructible animals, but their incredible resilience is not exclusive. In a June 7 paper in Current Biology, researchers from the Soil Cryology Lab at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science in Russia document the revival and reproduction of microscopic bdelloid rotifers from permafrost samples that, according to radiocarbon dating, are 24,000 years old.
Bdelloid rotifers are complex, microscopic animals that live in and near freshwater. Although only about half a millimeter in size, they have a brain and a nervous system, and they use their disc-like mouthparts to feast on bacteria and algae—food that goes through their one-way digestive tract and out their anus.
Because bdelloid rotifers tend to live in habitats that freeze solid during the winter, scientists have long known that they can enter a suspended metabolic state called cryptobiosis in response to extreme conditions. During cryptobiosis, the ...
