Editing Suspended animation (section)

== Basic principles ==
Suspended animation is understood as the pausing of [[Biological process|life process]]es by external or internal means without terminating [[life]] itself.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Asfar|first=P.|date=2014|title=Is pharmacological, H2S-induced 'suspended animation' feasible in the ICU?|journal=Critical Care|volume=182|issue=2|pages=215|doi=10.1186/cc13782|pmid=25028804|pmc=4060059 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Breathing, heartbeat and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.scientificamerican.com|title=How do frogs survive winter? Why don't they freeze to death?|magazine=Scientific American|date=11 July 2014|access-date=3 June 2017}}</ref> For this reason, this procedure has been associated with a lethargic state in nature when animals or plants appear, over a period, to be dead but then can wake up or prevail without suffering any harm. This has been termed in different contexts [[hibernation]], [[dormancy]] or [[anabiosis]] (the latter in some aquatic invertebrates and plants in scarcity conditions).

[[File:13C and 15N incorporation in representative microbial cells.webp|thumb|right|200px|Revived microbial life in very old marine sediment]]

In July 2020, [[Marine biology|marine biologists]] reported that [[Aerobic organism|aerobic]] [[microorganism]]s (mainly), in "quasi-suspended animation", were found in [[Sediment|organically-poor sediments]], up to 101.5 million years old, {{convert|68.9|m|ft|abbr=off}} below the [[Seabed|sea floor]] in the [[South Pacific Gyre]] (SPG) ("the deadest spot in the ocean"), and could be the [[List of longest-living organisms|longest-living life forms]] ever found.<ref name="NYT-2200728">{{cite news |last=Wu |first=Katherine J. |title=These Microbes May Have Survived 100 Million Years Beneath the Seafloor - Rescued from their cold, cramped and nutrient-poor homes, the bacteria awoke in the lab and grew. |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/science/microbes-100-million-years-old.html |date=28 July 2020 |access-date=31 July 2020 }}</ref><ref name="NC-20200728">{{cite journal |author=Morono, Yuki |display-authors=et al. |title=Aerobic microbial life persists in oxic marine sediment as old as 101.5 million years |date=28 July 2020 |journal=[[Nature Communications]] |volume=11 |number=3626 |page=3626 |doi=10.1038/s41467-020-17330-1 |pmid=32724059 |pmc=7387439 |bibcode=2020NatCo..11.3626M }}</ref>