DAILY STAR
Time-travelling viruses sealed in permafrost for thousands of years could wreak havoc as ice melts due to global warming.
Boffins reckon the frozen pathogens could leak into the world, sparking pandemics and destroying civilisation, in a mirror image of Ice Age disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow.
Scientists from the European Commission Joint Research Center fear once they are at large, the organisms could evolve to become dominant free-living species.
Last year scientists announced they had revived a 48,500-year-old virus found in melting Siberian permafrost.
The team said: “Some caused up to one-third of the host species to die out, while others increased diversity by up to 12% compared to the control simulations.
The risks posed by this 1% of released pathogens may seem small.
“But given the sheer number of ancient microbes regularly released into modern communities, outbreak events still represent a large hazard.’’
