Talk about a long nap. Scientists said they have revived worms buried in Siberian permafrost for 46,000 years.

The half-dozen creatures, a type of nematode or roundworm, were last awake when Neanderthals and woolly mammoths roamed the Earth. They survived for millennia in permafrost by entering a state of suspended animation, according to a paper published Thursday in the journal PLOS Genetics. Genetic testing suggests the worms are a new and possibly extinct species, researchers said.

“This paper could make people consider this third condition between life and death,” said Teymuras Kurzchalia, co-author of the study and a biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany.

[And it didn’t end well. ~ Beege]