Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: the worm who came back to life after 46,000 years

[Credit: Videologia] 
issue 26 August 2023

In Competition No. 3313, you were invited to supply a poem about the worms that were resurrected by scientists after being frozen in the Siberian permafrost for 46,000 years.

The tiny roundworms, buried deep underground since the late Pleistocene, were brought back to life by being immersed in water and transported to Germany – in a scientist’s pocket – to see what lessons the creatures might yield for 21st-century humanity.

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