Tiny creature back to life 24,000 years in Siberian deep freeze

The story of the bdelloid rotifer, an ancient being that has come back to life, is a fiction writer’s dream, says scientist.

A microscopic organism has wriggled back to life and reproduced asexually after lying frozen in the vast permafrost lands of northeastern Siberia for 24,000 years. Russian scientists found the tiny ancient animal, called the bdelloid rotifer, in soil taken from the river Alazeya in Russia’s region of Yakutia in the far north. The bdelloid rotifer, a multicellular organism found in freshwater habitats across the world, is known to be able to withstand extreme cold.