>>1 Ancient mystery viruses with no cure discovered in 15,000-year-old glacier
The viruses were sealed up for thousands of years in water frozen on top of the Tibetan Plateau before being found by scientists from the US and China digging down into the ice
Scientists have discovered dozens of ancient never-before-seen viruses inside a glacier.
The remarkable find was made by teams from the US and China who dug into the 15,000-year-old glacier on the Tibetan Plateau.
Contained within the ancient ice were at least 28 viral groups completely unknown to science.
The records of ancient microbes give scientists a fresh look into the Earth's evolutionary and climate history.
As massive climate change takes place, the scientists hope these frozen records will teach them about which microorganism will survive and what the future might look like.
According to the study, man-made global warming is causing glaciers across the world to shrink, releasing microbes and viruses trapped for up to hundreds of thousands of years.
The authors warned: "At a minimum, this could lead to the loss of microbial and viral archives that could be diagnostic and informative of past Earth climate regimes, however, in a worst-case scenario, this ice melt could release pathogens into the environment."
As almost all of these pathogens are unknown, it would be near impossible to predict what their effects would be on humans.
Viruses found in glacial samples known as ice cores are yet to be properly studied because of how small they are, said Scott O Rogers, professor at Bowling Green State University in Kentucky, and author of the book Defrosting Ancient Microbes: Emerging Genomes in a Warmer World.
He wrote: "The dangers encased in ice are real, and with the increases in melting of the ice worldwide, the risks from the release of pathogenic microbes also are increasing."
