Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email Email * SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy noticeFrom The Last of Us to The Thing, blockbuster movies and TV shows have been trying to warn the world not to dig into ancient ice, open the cursed Mummy’s tomb, or recreate dinosaurs, for decades. And yet, geologists and biologists at the University of Colorado Boulder said Thursday they’ve begun resurrecting ancient microbes that had been trapped in Arctic ice for as many as 40,000 years. “These are not dead samples by any means,” Tristan Caro, a former graduate student in geological sciences at the university, said in a statement. That means it could take a few months for microbes to become active after a hot spell, they said.