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Scientists Just Discovered Something Still Alive Inside Ötzi the Iceman 5,300 Years Later

Researchers found cold-loving microbes still reproducing inside the 5,300-year-old mummy, turning the famous Iceman into a living laboratory.

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Have you met our ancient, dead caveman friend Ötzi the Iceman? He died 5,300 years ago, but his body was shockingly well preserved by the glacier in which he was trapped in what is now northern Italy’s Ötztal Alps. Ötzi was so well preserved, in fact, that some parts of him were still alive thousands of years later.

According to a new study published in Microbiome by researchers at Eurac Research, the Iceman’s corpse is a small but thriving ecosystem.

Discovered in 1991 by hikers who at first thought he was a poor, unfortunate modern-day mountaineer who romantically met his fate on the very mountains that he so loved. But it was much more than that. Ötzi turned out to be a Copper Age man who lived around 3300 BCE.

He was about 46........

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