BEIJING, June 16 (Xinhuanet) -- A tiny frozen microbe has awoken after being trapped under glacial ice in Greenland for more than 120,000 years, media reports said Tuesday.

    The new bacteria species was found nearly three kilometers beneath a Greenland glacier by Dr Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and a team of scientists from Pennsylvania State University in the United States.

    The team coaxed the dormant microbe, now named Herminiimonas glaciei, back to life; first incubating their samples at 2 degree Celsius for seven months and then at 5 degree C for a further four and a half months, after which colonies of very small purple-brown bacteria were seen.

    "We were able to recover it and get it to grow in our laboratory," said study team member Jean Brenchley of Pennsylvania State University. "It was viable."

    H. glaciei is small even by bacterial standards. It is 10 to 50 times smaller than E. coli. Its small size probably helped it to survive in the liquid veins among ice crystals and the thin liquid film on their surfaces, the scientists speculate.

    Studying the long-lasting bacteria may provide clues to what life forms might exist on other planets.

    Most life on our planet has always consisted of microorganisms, so it is reasonable to consider that this might be true on other planets as well.

    "These extremely cold environments are the best analogues of possible extraterrestrial habitats," Loveland-Curtze said, referring to the Greenland glacier. "The exceptionally low temperatures can preserve cells and nucleic acids for even millions of years."

    The new bacterium is described in the current issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

    (Agencies)