A tiny bug found discovered deep under the Greenland ice has been reawakened from a slumber lasting more than 100,000 thousand years.
And scientists believe the unusual bacterium - Herminiimonas glaciei - may hold clues to life on other planets.
Researchers found the bug when they examined a 120,000-year-old, 3km-deep core sample drilled from glacial ice.
It took the scientists the best part of a year to coax the dormant microbes back to life by carefully warming the ice they were housed in.
As the bugs awoke and began to replicate, colonies of tiny purple-brown bacteria started to appear.
H. glaciei belongs to a rare family of "ultramicro" bacteria that live in extreme environments.
It can be up to 50 times smaller than the food bug E.coli.
Dr J Loveland-Curtze, who led the US team at Pennsylvania State University, said: "These extremely cold environments are the best analogues of possible extraterrestrial habitats."
"the exceptionally low temperatures can preserve cells and nucleic acids for for even millions of years."
"H. glaciei is one of just a handful of officially ultra-small species and the only one so far from the Greenland ice sheet."
"Studying these bacterian can provide insight into how cells can survive and even grow under extremely harsh conditions."
She stressed that H. glaciei was not harmfl to humans - which was just as well since it can pass straight through safety filters commonly used in laboratories and hospitals."
But Dr Loveland-Curtze warned that if harmful - or pathogenic - super-small bugs existed they would be hard to detect.
She said: "Other pathogens... could be present in solutions presumed to be sterile.
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