India, Nov. 30 -- When permafrost melts, bacteria, viruses and radioactive materials, trapped in its frigid layers for thousands of years may also be released

European researchers have raised concerns of yet another pandemic after resurrecting a 48,500-year-old 'zombie virus' from a frozen lake in Russia.

Climate change-induced thawing of the permanent frozen land (permafrost) in the Arctic could pose a new public health threat, the researchers wrote in an article shared in the preprint repository bioRxiv.

Permafrost covers nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere. Global warming has irreversibly thawed large swathes of the same.

Scientists have long warned that this will exacerbate climate change by releasing previously accumulate...