Correct Answer : Russia
French scientists have revived a 48,500-year-old “zombie virus” buried under a frozen lake in Russia.
* According to New York Post, the French scientists have sparked fears of yet another pandemic after the revival of the zombie virus.
* The New York Post has quoted a viral study which is yet to be peer-reviewed. "The situation would be much more disastrous in the case of plant, animal, or human diseases caused by the revival of an ancient unknown virus," reads the study.
* According to the preliminary report, global warming is irrevocably thawing enormous swathes of permafrost -- permanently frozen ground that covers a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere. This has had the unsettling effect of "releasing organic materials frozen for up to a million years" - possibly deadly germs included.
* The oldest, Pandoravirus yedoma, was 48,500-year-old, a record age for a frozen virus returning to a form where it may infect other creatures. This breaks the previous record of a 30,000-year-old virus identified in Siberia by the same scientists in 2013.
* The new strain is one of 13 viruses described in the study, each with its own genome, according to Science Alert.
* While the Pandoravirus was discovered at the bottom of a lake in Yukechi Alas, Yakutia, Russia, others have been discovered everywhere from mammoth fur to Siberian wolf intestines..
Source : Tribune India
