Researchers are reanimating 40,000-year-old microbes

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

At the US Army Corps of Engineers’ research facility in central Alaska, a unique tunnel descends underground. Measuring over 350 feet deep, mammoth bones jut out from its surrounding walls. However, a team of researchers didn’t go to the remote site for ancient fossils. They were hunting for something much smaller—and smellier.

“The first thing you notice when you walk in there is that it smells really bad. It smells like a musty basement that’s been left to sit for way too long,” geological scientist Tristan Caro recounted in a statement. “To a microbiologist, that’s very exciting because interesting smells are often microbial.”

After adjusting to the rough scent, Caro and his colleagues focused on extracting samples of permafrost, each of which contained thousands of microscopic organisms. The microbes had spent as long as 40,000 years frozen inside of the icy soil, but after millennia of hibernation, it was time to wake up. What they did next would help researchers better understand—and possibly prepare—for what seems almost inevitable amid Earth’s warming temperatures.

“It’s one of the biggest unknowns in climate responses,” explained Colorado University Boulder (CU Boulder) geological scientist Sebastian Kopf. “How will the thawing of all this frozen ground, where we know there’s tons of carbon stored, affect the ecology of these regions and the rate of climate change?”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/researchers-reanimating-40-000-old-180638503.html

Hope they don't end up releasing something no one has resistance to.