This urgency is not merely scientific.

The materials preserved in the permafrost represent an archive of the human past that is irreplaceable: biological specimens from people who lived thousands of years ago, plant communities that existed before the modern world, the ecological record of the Ice Age preserved in the deep cold.

Once lost, they are lost forever.

The Ancient North Siberians waited 31,000 years for the technology that could read their genetic story.

The story they told, when finally read, was transformative for our understanding of human prehistory.