---
title: "Scientists Discover Ancient Viruses Inside Glacier"
description: "A team of researchers discovered 28 never-before-seen ancient viruses in 15,000-year-old ice sourced from a Tibetan glacier."
date: "2020-01-22"
modified: "2020-01-22"
authors:
  - name: "Kristin Houser"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/kristin"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-discover-ancient-viruses-inside-glacier"
categories:
  - "Health & Medicine"
  - "Medical"
  - "Pathogens"
  - "Viruses"
tags:
  - "glacier"
  - "ice melt"
  - "the digest"
  - "virus"
---

# Scientists Discover Ancient Viruses Inside Glacier

![A team of researchers discovered 28 never-before-seen ancient viruses in 15,000-year-old ice sourced from a Tibetan glacier.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/scientists-discover-ancient-viruses-inside-glacier.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Image via NeedPix/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Break the Ice

In 2015, a team of scientists from the United States and China traveled to Tibet to gather samples of Earth's oldest glacial ice.

Earlier this month, they published a [paper](<https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.03.894675v1>) on the pre-print server *bioRxiv* detailing their discovery of [28 new virus groups](<https://www.livescience.com/unknown-viruses-discovered-tibetan-glacier.html>) in the 15,000-year-old ice — and warning that climate change could free the ancient viruses into the modern world.

## Ancient Viruses

The team drilled 50 meters (164 feet) down into the glacier to obtain two [ice cores](<https://icecores.org/about-ice-cores>), which then underwent a three-step decontamination protocol. After that, the researchers used microbiology techniques to identify microbes in the samples.

Those techniques revealed 33 virus groups — including, notably, 28 ancient viruses that scientists had never seen before.

## Double Trouble

As the team pointed out in its paper, climate change now threatens both our ability to exhaustively catalogue those tiny lifeforms — as well as our ability to [stay safe](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/melting-arctic-releasing-poison-disease-nuclear-waste>) from dangerous ones.

“At a minimum, \[ice melt\] could lead to the loss of microbial and viral archives that could be diagnostic and informative of past Earth climate regimes," they wrote. "However, in a worst-case scenario, this ice melt could release pathogens into the environment."

**READ MORE:** [Ancient never-before-seen viruses discovered locked up in Tibetan glacier](<https://www.livescience.com/unknown-viruses-discovered-tibetan-glacier.html>) \[*Live Science*\]

**More on ice melt:** *[The Melting Arctic Is Releasing Poison, Disease and Nuclear Waste](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/melting-arctic-releasing-poison-disease-nuclear-waste>)*

### Author social links  
[LinkedIn](<https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinjhouser>)