Image of Pithovirus sibericum isolated from a 30,000-year-old permafrost borehole in 2014. (Photo: Jean-Michel Claverie) Scientists are warning of so-called “zombie viruses”, also known as Methuselah microbes, which are frozen in the Arctic permafrost....
Given the rapid warming in the Arctic, the days of permafrost soils such as here on Svalbard seem numbered. Dormant within them are countless microorganisms, including potential pathogens that can be released as the soils thaw. (Photo: Julia Hager) Thawing permafrost...
The Milne Fjord Epishelf lake lies hidden under a layer of ice and floats on the denser and heavier waters of the Arctic Ocean. Photo: Denis Sarrazin, Center for Northern Studies In the far north of Canada, on the north coast of Ellesmere Island, in the Milne Fjord...
The viruses found in the small meltwater pools on glaciers, so-called cryoconit holes, in Greenland, in Spitsbergen and in the Alps, have remarkably similar genomes. Photo: Christopher Bellas An international team of scientists studied life in small meltwater pools on...