Even though viruses from China are getting plenty of attention these days, most may be surprised to learn that still-living, 15,000-year-old, viruses have been discovered frozen in glacier ice from China’s Tibetan Plateau.
In 2015, ice cores gathered from the Guliya ice cap in western China, 22,000 feet above sea level, were studied by an international team of microbiologists, including scientists from Ohio State University. Not to worry though. For their study, the scientists claim to have created a “new, ultra-clean method of analyzing microbes and viruses in ice without contaminating it”. Apparently, at that altitude, no one needs to worry about bats. In all, 33 viruses were discovered, and at least 28 of those are previously unknown to science. The findings, were published in the journal Microbiome (https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-021-01106-w).
Life found in conditions which one might think would preclude it, has, in recent years, come to be labeled as ‘extremophile,’ and includes not only that found in extremely cold conditions, like on the Tibetan glacier, but in hot spots like volcanic vents deep in the ocean. The existence of such life forms has encouraged those who speculate about the possibility of life on other celestial bodies, such as the moons of Jupiter, both within, and beyond, the solar system.
The new discovery has reminded some observers of the announcement published in Nature in March 2002 of 20,000-year-old hand prints and footprints found in an area of Tibet, where at a time, it was believed, everything was covered by a giant glacier (https://www.nature.com/articles/news020325-5). A primitive stove found nearby suggested the area might have been a camp or settlement. Mainstream archaeology had previously insisted that there were no human settlements on the Tibetan plateau before 2,000 BC. The news was taken by alternative scholars, as corroboration for more traditional indigenous accounts claiming a far greater antiquity for life in Tibet…viral and otherwise.
