What are the chances of...

[The Backlash Cometh]

seeds, Microbes, bacteria or fungus cells that were frozen during glacier times, thawing out and recovering from their hibernation and growing?

[StarfarerBill]

1. It's been done with seeds recovered from pharaohs' tombs, I believe.

So who knows? Dormant, simple lifeforms may still grow even after millennia in deep-freeze.

[Soylent Brice]

2. kick. i have no idea but you have grabbed my attention and am curious myself now. n/t

[DJ13]

3. Would make a great thriller

Just...... no more dinosaurs, okay?

[Oregone]

4. Title it "The Thaw"

Maybe you could get someone on the Doors cast to make a cameo?

[damntexdem]

9. Oh darn: come spring, I was going to plant my dinosaur seeds.

What's your problem with a little garden-variety T Rex? ;-)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

5. Good chance, though lake-bottom stuff may be a bigger threat

A lot of stuff survives freezing surprisingly well.

(Like sperm and ova. How can there not be a major defect rate with frozen ova and sperm? Beats me. That's frozen a lot colder than what you're talking about, but still noteworthy.)

So there's no reason for some spores and such not to survive.

What troubles me more are strata at the bottom of some deep lakes-particularly frozen over lakes-that have been undisturbed since forever. I have read that below a certain level the temperature and pressure prevent circulation and there are lost worlds of bacteria and such there.

Of course, we already have our hands full with the microbial contents of African caves. I think that cave scene was at the beginning of THE HOT ZONE.

(Africa is a particular problem because man has been there the longest and our closest animal relatives live there, so much more history of things gaming chimp and human immune systems.)

[el_bryanto]

7. Bacteria-saurus.

On the other hand, if you believe in evolution and natural selection, well, doesn't it stand to reason that those old-timey bacteria and microbes are weaker than modern microbes?

Bryant

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

8. True, though weaker is relative.

If we haven't been exposed to something for millenia then we don't have any anti-bodies for it.

So stuff that might have been a minor nuisance for early man could be deadly for us.

And way back when (pre-agricultural)we didn't have the population density to sustain epidemics so germs could play out very differently now versus then.

(Ebola didn't really become a threat until cars and air-travel. It killed or incapacitated everyone in the village so fast they couldn't wander around spreading it to the next village.)

And even if we are not affected there are all the other plants and animals to think of.

[damntexdem]

10. No, we have evolved some immunity to modern stuff.

But would lack it for old stuff.

Evolution doesn't mean "progress," nor necessarily getting stronger or more-complex -- although that may happen. True, when evolution has been at work longer, there is often a greater variety, including some greater complexity, just based on more time to have developed. But in the evolutionary time line, the times since Ice Ages have been mere blinks of eyes. On the other hand, there has been no evolutionary advantage to maintaining immunity to a germ that has not been active for just those few thousand years; nor have our systems been challenged by such germs.

So if something nasty were to thaw out, the issue would be whether it was something to which we are susceptible (e.g., a disease that killed woolly mammoths would not necessarily have affected humans. If we were susceptible, we likely would have little immunity.

[MyNameGoesHere]

6. I think the real problem

is how can one prove the exact age of the seeds? A lot of claims have been made regarding 2000 year old seeds germinating but carbon dating on such a new organism is iffy. So then they use the surroundings as a guesstimate. But who is to say when and who put the seeds there? For the most part 500 years is a good guess for some seeds to remain viable. On average i am guessing decades though for MOST seeds.