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Image Caption: Transmission electron microscopy color image of a Pithovirus sibericum cross-section. This virion, dating back more than 30,000 years, is 1.5 m long and 0.5 m wide, which makes it the largest virus ever discovered. Credit: Julia Bartoli & Chantal Abergel, IGS, CNRS/AMU

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Giant viruses may seem like the latest creation in a Hollywood B movie production, but the recent discovery of a larger-than-life virus buried in ice is definitely no science-fiction tale. A husband-and-wife team from Aix-Marseille University in France have discovered a monster virus that has been buried in Siberias permafrost for the past 30,000 years.

Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel, who led the discovery, have named this new creature Pithovirus sibericum, inspired by the Greek word pithos for the large container used by ancient Greeks for food and wine. Were French, so we had to put wine in the story, joked Claverie.

While the discovery is significant for science, it is more so for health, as the virus has been found to still be infectious. However, this predator only preys on amoebae.

Still, the researchers warn that as Earths ice caps and glaciers melt around the world, more and more viruses, perhaps buried for thousands or millions of years, could reemerge and potentially become global human health risks.

The newly discovered P. sibericum is not only a giant virus it is the largest one ever found. At 1.5 micrometers long, it is about 50 percent larger than the previous record holder (Pandoraviruses), which were also discovered by Claverie and Abergel. The husband-and-wife team discovered their first giant virus in 2003, named Mimivirus.

While these viruses are by no means giant in the normal sense of the word, which may conjure up images of mammoths, dinosaurs and whales, they are loosely defined as giants because of the fact that they can be seen using a standard microscope, according to the team.

Once again, this group has opened our eyes to the enormous diversity that exists in giant viruses, Curtis Suttle, a virologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who was not involved in the work, told Natures Ed Yong.

Claveria and Abergels latest work, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is based partly on a study from a few years earlier.

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Siberian Permafrost Reveals Ancient Giant Virus, Remains Infectious