Virus Resurrected from 48,500 Year Old Mammoth Excrement

In Russia’s frozen lands stretching from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, perhaps the world’s oldest virus has been brought back to life. Another virus, called the “Megavirus Mammoth”, also attracted attention.

Scientists continue to conduct studies for the Ice Age. According to people working in the old and frozen lands of Siberia, the melting of these lands is disrupting the climate balance of the Earth.

World’s Oldest Virus May Be Revived

In a new paper that has yet to be peer-reviewed, the researchers describe how they detected and resuscitated 13 viruses from samples collected from Russia’s territory. These viruses are thought to have descended from 5 different organisms believed to have evolved from a common parent virus.

Scientists, who revived the 48,500-year-old virus, brought 3 more viruses back to life thanks to 27 thousand-year-old frozen mammoth excrement and frozen soils containing mammoth wool. These viruses have been named: Pithovirus Mammoth, Pandoravirus Mammoth, and Megavirus Mammoth.

It is also among the learned information that two new viruses, Pacmanvirus lupus and Pandoravirus lupus, were isolated from the frozen stomach of a Siberian wolf (Canis lupus). These viruses can infect soil and water-dwelling amoebae and thus continue to multiply.

“48,500 years is a world record,” Jean-Michel Claverie, who works for the University of Aix-Marseille in France, told New Scientist.

Researchers, who think that increasing temperatures due to climate change will revive this type of virus, think that almost every new virus can be destroyed with specific treatment methods. Other than that, some researchers claimed that it revived bacteria that are said to be 250 million years old.