[thedoc (OP)]

Scientists have resuscitated a massive virus that has lain frozen for 30,000 years in Siberian permafrost.

Read the whole story on our website by clicking here

  

[CliffordK]

Weren't samples of the 1918 flu recovered from permafrost.  Of course that is less than a century old, but allowed researchers to study one of the most devastating flu epidemics in modern times.

Perhaps one adaptation of some zoonotic (and amoeba) viruses is a period of hibernation in ice which could allow skipping a few generations of hosts.