A SPECIES of bacteria that has lain dormant in the Alaskan permafrost for 32,000 years has been revived. It is the first new species to be found in ancient ice, and its discoverers say that it adds weight to the idea that looking for frozen organisms on Mars is worthwhile.
The bacterium, discovered near Fox, Alaska, has been named Carnobacterium pleistocenium after the Pleistocene period when it was last loose. At the time woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers were roaming the planet.
NASA astrobiologist Richard Hoover retrieved the bacteria from a tunnel in the Alaskan permafrost carved by the…
