Scientists have revived a number of ancient viruses that have been locked deeply in the Siberian permafrost since the Ice Age. While the research undoubtedly sounds risky, the team believes it’s a threat worth looking into when we consider the growing perils of thawing permafrost and climate change.

In a new paper, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, the researchers explain how they identified and revived 13 viruses belonging to five different clades from samples collected in the icy Russian far east. 

Among the haul, they managed to revive a virus from a permafrost sample that was around 48,500 years old. 

They also revived three new viruses from a 27,000-year-old sample of frozen mammoth poop and a chunk of permafrost stuffed with a large amount of mammoth wool. This trio was aptly named Pithovirus mammoth, Pandoravirus mammoth, and Megavirus mammoth. 

A further two new viruses were isolated from the frozen stomach contents of a Siberian wolf (Canis lupus), named Pacmanvirus lupus and Pandoravirus lupus.

These viruses infect amoebae, little more than single-celled blobs that live in soil and water, but experiments indicated that the viruses do still have the potential to be infectious pathogens. The team introduced the viruses into a culture of live amoebae, showing that they were still capable of invading a cell and replicating. 

The project comes from a team of researchers at Aix