Liquid blood extracted from a 42,000-year-old foal found frozen in Siberia

Scientists have just discovered a 42,000-year-old sample of liquid blood from a foal, perfectly preserved in the eternal ice of Siberia. This discovery not only sparks curiosity about the ancient world, but also opens the door to revolutionary research into life and the environment tens of miles ago.

The team hopes to develop viable cells from the foal’s tissue, paving the way for further experiments aimed at cloning the extinct horse.

Over the past month, scientists have made more than 20 unsuccessful attempts to extract viable cells from the foal’s tissue Semyon Grigoryev/North-Eastern Federal University

Last August, a group of mammoth tusk hunters unearthed the nearly intact remains of a 42,000-year-old foal during an expedition to Siberia’s Batagaika Crater. Preserved by the region’s permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, the young horse showed no signs of external damage, instead retaining its skin, tail and hooves, as well as hair on its legs, head and other body parts.

Now, the Siberian Times reports, researchers from Russia’s Northeastern Federal University and South Korea’s Sooam Biotechnology Research Foundation have extracted liquid blood and urine from the specimen, paving the way for further analysis aimed at cloning the long-dead horse and resurrecting the extinct Lenska lineage to which it belongs.

To clone the animal, scientists would need to extract viable cells from blood samples and grow them in the lab. This task is easier said than done: over the past month, the team has made more than 20 attempts to grow cells from the blood samples. According to another article in the Siberian Times, all of the experiments failed. However, Russian researcher Lena Grigoryeva, who led the study, says the participants remain “confident in the result.”

The fact that the horse still has hair makes it one of the best-preserved Ice Age animals ever found, Grigoryev tells CNN’s Gianluca Mezzofiore, adding: “We can now say what color the wool of extinct horses from the Pleistocene era was.”

In life, the foal had a chestnut body and a black mane and tail. Just one or two weeks old at the time of her death, the young Lenskaya, or Lena horse, suffered the same premature death as many similar intact animals trapped in the permafrost for millennia.

Scientists extracted samples of liquid blood from the heart vessels of a 42,000-year-old animal. Semyon Grigoryev/North-Eastern Federal University

The foal likely drowned in some kind of “natural trap” – mud that later froze and turned into permafrost, Semyon Grigoryev of the Yakutia Mammoth Museum told Russian news agency TASS, as reported by the Siberian Times . “A huge amount of mud and silt that the foal’s gastrointestinal tract contained was found, as were remains of food swallowed during its last seconds of life,” Grigoryev claims.

This is the second time researchers have extracted liquid blood from the remains of prehistoric creatures. In 2013, a group of Russian scientists accomplished the same feat using the body of a 15,000-year-old female woolly mammoth discovered by Grigoryev and his colleagues in 2013, as George Dvorsky reports for Gizmodo . (It’s worth noting that the team studying the foal has also expressed hopes of cloning a woolly mammoth.) Significantly, the foal’s blood is a staggering 27,000 years older than this earlier sample.

The NEFU and South Korean scientists behind the new research are so confident of their success that they have already begun searching for a surrogate mare to carry the cloned horse Lena and, in the words of the Siberian Times , fulfill “the historic role of giving birth to the returning species.” It’s worth noting, however, that any praise is premature and, as Dvorsky writes, indicative of the “typical unbridled enthusiasm” seen in the Russian media outlet’s reporting.

Speaking to CNN’s Mezzofiore, Grigoryev himself expressed doubts about the researcher’s chances, explaining: “I think that even one-time preservation [of] blood is absolutely useless for cloning purposes, since the main blood cells… do not have nuclei with DNA.”

He continued: “We are trying to find intact cells in muscle tissue and internal organs that are also very well preserved.”

What the Siberian Times does not address are the many “ethical and technological” questions raised by bringing back long-vanished species. Among other concerns, according to Dvorsky, scientists have cited the clones’ diminished quality of life, issues of genetic diversity and inbreeding, and the absence of a suitable Ice Age habitat.

Whether the Russian-South Korean team can actually fulfil their ambitious goal remains to be seen. However, if the purported resurrection in July 2018 of two similarly aged 40,000-year-old roundworms “thawed” after millennia in the Arctic permafrost is any indication, the resurrection of ancient animals is becoming an increasingly realistic possibility.