The animal is resurrected and reproduced after 24,000 years of freezing.

According to study co-author Stas Malavin, the discovery raises questions about the mechanisms that use this multicellular animal, which is about half a millimeter long and lives in a freshwater environment to withstand such a latency period.

Rotifers could be added to the list of multicellular organisms that appear to be able to survive indefinitely thanks to cryptobiosis, “a state in which metabolism is almost completely stopped,” Malavin said.

A team of scientists collected samples from the Alazeya River in Siberia and used radiocarbon dating to determine that these samples are between 23,960 and 24,485 years old.

After thawing, the rotifer bdelloid was able to reproduce parthenogenesis, a type of asexual reproduction in which the embryo develops without fertilization.

For other multicellular organisms, the resurrection of the nematode worm 30,000 years old has been previously reported. Mosses and plants also recover from thousands of years on ice.

The findings of the discovery, announced today, were published in the journal Current Biology.

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