After 7,000 years without light and oxygen in Baltic Sea mud, researchers bring prehistoric algae back to life

Researchers have brought a 7,000-year-old algae back to life. The plant had fallen to the bottom of the Baltic Sea and had survived there without light and oxygen in the sediment. Many living beings are able to move into a kind of sleep mode under unfavourable conditions, the research team explained. "In doing so, they switch to a state of reduced metabolic activity and often form special permanent stages with stable protective covers and stored…

Researchers brought the diatom Skeletonema marinoi from Baltic Sea sediments from their inactive permanent stage. The algae thrives magnificently and produces oxygen

Scientists from the Leibniz Institute Rostock have achieved an extraordinary success: they were able to revive a diatom that sank in the Baltic Sea 7,000 years ago.

After thousands of years of sleeping on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, diatoms of the species Skeletonema marinoi now bring them back to life. And they are astounded: the algae did not only survive as they did, but "they grow, share and operate photosynthesis".

She was not dead, she only slumbered a few millennia in the mud. An algae from the Baltic Sea serves as a prime example of the "resurrection ecology" practiced by a Rostock research team.

After 7,000 years without light and oxygen in Baltic Sea mud, researchers bring prehistoric algae back to life

A research team led by the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) was able to revive dormant stages of algae that sank to the bottom of the Baltic Sea almost 7,000 years ago. Despite thousands of years of inactivity in the sediment without light and oxygen, the investigated diatom species regained full viability.