As climate change intensifies, parts of the polar permafrost have also begun to melt, exposing the secrets of the ice for thousands of years – in addition to the lifelike ancient animals, there are also some ancient "threats" buried in the permafrost.
Interview experts
Li Qihan (Research Fellow, Institute of Medical Biology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences)
The wind and snow that had been whistling for several days finally stopped, and the white ice world began to awaken. Buried in a cave under thick snow, a female cave lion is struggling to fend off her worst enemy, hunger.
The lioness gently licked the sleeping cub, and the cub in her arms was only a month or two old, covered with golden fluff. As it grows faster, the cub's curiosity about the outside world grows heavier—it will soon be able to eat meat, and the natural wildness calls it into the snow-covered world.
In this way, the hungry lioness took the cubs and went outside to forage for food in the early winter sun.
▲ The scene of the cave lion hunting imagined by the painter, created in 1920 (Source: wikipedia)
Suddenly, a ground buried in snow recessed – it turned out that a huge bottomless crack was hidden under the snow! However, it was already too late, and the young lion, who had no time to react, tumbled and fell, and the young body was instantly crushed under the scattered ice and snow rubble...
What this ancient lion cub has experienced, we can only use our imagination to fill it now. But what is certain is that its life is suddenly frozen in the ice age.
In the endless darkness, the cold and bitter cold, 28,000 years of time are fleeting. A man named Boris The arrival of Berezhnev's mammoth ivory collector "brought the cave lion cub, frozen in frozen ground, to the light of day".
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Frozen "Ancient Animal Cemetery"
500,000 years ago, the African continent was inhabited by a large number of primitive lions. Over time, some lions migrated "out of Africa" to Europe, and their descendants gradually adapted to the rugged mountains and cold climates of the region, eventually evolving into cave lions. These now extinct cats, far larger than modern lions, roamed the vast expanse of the Russian Far East 300,000 to 100,000 years ago, feeding on mammoth cubs, camels and bison before disappearing 10,000 years ago.
In 2017, near a river in the Yakutia region of Eastern Siberia, Boris spotted the cub of a male cave lion and named it "Boris". A year later, less than 15 meters from the discovery of Boris, he found another cave lion female cub, Sparta.
▲Female cave lion cub "Sparta" up close, the beard is still clearly visible (Source: Stockholm University)
Compared to Boris, whose remains were partially damaged, Sparta is probably "the best-preserved ice age animal ever found," said Lauu Darren, a researcher at the Paleogenetics Center in Stockholm, Sweden.
The Spartan was covered in complete golden fur, did not look like any wounds or injuries, and its eyes and mouth were slightly open, as if it were sleeping quietly. From the clear roots of the beard at the mouth to the hanging and sharp claws, the "Spartan" that mummified under natural conditions has become almost the same as when he was alive 28,000 years ago, except that he had become dry.
▲ Figures a, c, e, f are "Sparta", and Figures b and d are "Boris" (Source: Academic Journal Quaternary)
"We used ct scans and found that its skull was damaged and its ribs were dislocated. Given its (good) preservation, we think it must have been buried very quickly after death, as if it had fallen into a mudslide or a crack in permafrost. Darren said.
According to the study, in addition to the slight deformation of the skull, the "Spartan" was also very flattened in its hind limbs and tail, and it seemed to have been under great pressure. When Boris was excavated, his hind limbs were extended and his claws were slightly flattened towards the back and abdomen, possibly after struggling or shaving water before dying.
▲The outline of the "Boris" skeleton under the ct scan (Source: Academic Journal Quaternary)
At first, the researchers thought that the two lion cubs not far apart might be "family", but after some testing, people were surprised to find that the two "mummies" were not only not brothers and sisters, but their death time was 15,000 years apart - "Boris" is 43,000 years ago!
Two cave lion cubs died here, could it be that during the Ice Age tens of thousands of years ago, this was a dangerous place? Perhaps on the contrary, this was once a habitat loved by ancient creatures.
In the same excavation area of the two cubs, researchers also found mummies of more "old" animals: a 46,000-year-old horned lark, and a 18,000-year-old "dog cub" that resembled a dog and a wolf. If these animals have anything in common, they all look "like they've been dead for a few days."
Various archaeological creatures beneath the permafrost
In fact, the discovery of permafrost life is not uncommon. The extreme cold of the polar region can not only stop the heart of the ancient creature that has suffered an accident, but also press the pause button on the rotten and deteriorated clock.
In 2018, also in the Yakutia region of eastern Siberia, scientists found a mummy of a young horse 40,000 to 30,000 years old, and the hooves, tail and even nostrils of the young horse were still "hairy" and still clearly visible when excavated.
▲ The mummy of the young horse found in the frozen soil, the details of its hair are still alive (Source: Tohoku Federal University, Russia)
In 2020, scientists found another woolly rhinoceros mummy in the permafrost of the area. When this 50,000-20,000-year-old woolly rhinoceros was discovered, 80% of the brown hair on the body was very well preserved, in addition to the teeth and bones, even the last meal it ate before it fell into the water and died, it was still well preserved in the intestine. Because of this, it is also considered to be the best preserved specimen of the woolly rhinoceros to date.
In 1993, Russian scientists found a female human mummy that had died for at least 2,500 years in the permafrost of the Ukak Plateau in the Altai Mountains. At the time of the excavation, the female corpse was very well preserved, whether it was her elastic skin or the exquisite deer head tattoo on her arm, which shocked the world, people called her "Princess Ukak", and some even thought that it was "one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century".
▲ Tattoo on the shoulder of "Princess Ukak" (Source: Siberian Times)
With the increase in human activities in permafrost areas in recent years, more and more "dead" beings in ancient times have appeared in front of the world. Among them are not only extinct rare birds and exotic animals, but also microorganisms that are invisible to the naked eye. After tens of millions of years in the permafrost, they have not only been able to see the light of day, but some have even been "resurrected"...
In June, Russian scientists published a research paper in Contemporary Biology saying they had found a leech rotifer that had been "dormant" for at least 24,000 years 3.5 meters below the Siberian permafrost. Subsequently, in the laboratory, scientists also succeeded in "resurrecting" some of them!
It is understood that the leech rotifer is a freshwater invertebrate organism with a very small body size that can only be seen under a microscope. In the evolution of nearly 40 million years, leech rotifers have evolved a very tenacious vitality - in the harsh environment of anhydrous, frozen, low temperature, low oxygen, etc., they can still survive in the state of incomplete dehydration "ultra-long standby".
Scientists have previously done experiments to freeze modern vermicular rotifers in a low-temperature freezing environment of -20 ° C, and these microorganisms can still be "awakened" 10 years later.
Under the microscope, at least 24,000 leech rotifers are sleeping (Source: AFP)
It is reported that scientists have repeatedly frozen and thawed these ancient "little zombies" found in the frozen soil and found that these microorganisms will automatically turn on the "protection mode" in extreme environments to prevent cells from freezing. After thawing and "resurrecting", the leech rotifer can also reproduce clones that are exactly the same as the ontology genes through the breeding of parthenogenes.
Melting "refrigerators" with hidden worries
Ancient creatures are "crossing" to modern times more and more frequently, is it a blessing or a curse for human beings?
For the earth, the permafrost layer is like a huge natural refrigerator, which is "sealed" in addition to various large creatures, but also more bacteria and viruses that modern humans have never touched.
In 2014, the joint laboratory of the French National Research Center and the University of Marseille announced that researchers had found the "Siberian broad-mouth can virus" in permafrost samples collected in the Russian Far East four years ago.
Broad-mouth can viruses are a class of very large viruses with genomes larger than most known viruses and viruses that can exceed 0.5 microns in diameter and can be seen even under a light microscope. The Virus discovered by the French researchers, which is buried 30 meters deep in sedimentary layers underground, found in experiments that although the virus has been frozen in the permafrost for at least 30,000 years, it is still contagious after "recovery", successfully infecting amoeba amoeba.
▲ Siberian broad-mouth tank virus under the microscope (Source: AFP)
It is unknown what threat Siberian broad-mouth can viruses pose to prehistoric species, at least for modern humans. Like many giant viruses, the broad-mouth can virus, while capable of infecting amoeba, does not infect humans.
"You can't say it's 100 percent impossible, but the odds are very small." Li Qihan, a researcher at the Institute of Medical Biology of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, told reporters that the physiological gap between amoeba amoeba and vertebrates is very large, "The parents are too far apart, so the possibility of cross-border transmission to humans is very small." ”
The premise of virus infection in the human body is to be able to bind to human cells, and this process relies on the proteins on the surface of the virus to bind to certain protein receptors on the surface of the human cell membrane. However, the Siberian broad-mouth can virus was frozen in frozen ground for more than 10,000 years, resulting in its long-term "absence" of biological evolution, which greatly reduced the probability of it matching higher biological cell receptors ten thousand years later.
"Only by 'tossing' with people for a long time can they have the opportunity to 'find out the way' and mutate into a pattern that can deceive the body's immune system." Li Qihan explained. But scientists will be cautious. "Under normal circumstances, when scientists do research on prehistoric biological samples, they will do adequate protective measures and disease screening, and will do experiments in an environment that ensures biosecurity." He said.
Compared with the long-term storage of prehistoric microorganisms, the bacteria that have been "buried" for a short time are more dangerous: in 2016, there was a mysterious anthrax outbreak in Northern Siberia in Russia, which killed a 12-year-old boy, dozens of infections, and more than 2,300 reindeer, and the main culprit of this epidemic is the bacillus anthracis that has been sealed in the permafrost for more than 75 years.
According to a Russian government spokesman, the last outbreak of anthrax in the region was in 1941. At that time, in order to save wood, people did not burn the carcasses of reindeer infected with anthrax, but chose to bury them on the spot, and the invisible "time bombs" were buried under the frozen soil. Decades later, the weather became unusually hot, and the heat wave caused some of the permafrost to melt, and the carcasses of the sick deer were exposed again, and the boys who had mistakenly eaten the frozen meat of the sick deer were subsequently infected with anthrax.
With the intensification of the greenhouse effect, the polar permafrost, the "refrigerator of the earth", is also accelerating the thawing and even melting. Under the cold ice, what awaits humans?
Producer: Popular Science Central Kitchen
Producer: Beijing Science and Technology News | Science plus client
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