• A 48,500-year-old zombie virus that had been frozen beneath the ice has been resurrected by scientists.
• As they have the potential to be contagious, this has generated worries of a new epidemic.

According to researchers who recovered nearly two dozen viruses, including one frozen under a lake more than 48,500 years ago, climate change brought on by global warming is rapidly thawing the ancient permafrost, which may provide a new hazard to people.

Researchers from Europe analysed prehistoric samples taken from permafrost in Russia's Siberia. According to a Bloomberg story, they discovered that 13 new diseases, which they resurrected and labelled as 'zombie viruses,' continued to be contagious despite spending many aeons frozen in the earth.

 The oldest, known as Pandoravirus Yedoma, has an estimated age of 48,500 years, breaking the previous record of 30,000 years, which was held by a virus discovered by the same scientists in 2013.
The thawing of permafrost brought on by atmospheric warming has long been predicted by scientists to accelerate climate change by releasing methane and other previously contained greenhouse gases. Less is known about its impact on dormant pathogens.

Due to the strains they targeted, primarily those able to infect amoeba microbes, the team of researchers from Russia, Germany, and France claimed the biological risk of reanimating the viruses they studied was 'totally negligible.'

They cautioned that their findings can be expanded to indicate the threat is genuine, saying that the possible rebirth of a virus that might infect humans or animals is considerably more problematic. 

Accordingly, it is possible that old permafrost may unleash these unidentified viruses when it thaws, scientists wrote in a preprint manuscript posted to the bioRxiv preprint server that hasn't yet undergone peer review, according to the Bloomberg report.