Here at Monster-Watch, we’ve long debated what exactly is the world’s oldest living thing. For a while our bets were on a bristlecone pine in California’s White Mountains; nicknamed “Methuselah” and aging in at 4,700 years old (you know, give or take), this venerable beast of a bush had it made. (Note that Prometheus, another bristlecone pine in Nevada, was the record holder until it was cut down in 1964. Oops.)

But Methuselah just got beat, and we mean really, really beat: now we have something 127 times older. Ice cores drilled in Siberia, Antarctica, and Canada have just given up 600,000-year-old (again, give or take) bacteria. We’ve seen DNA strands up to 800,000 years old frozen in ice, but these new bacteria have DNA that’s still totally intact. More amazingly, some of the bacteria were still respiring, putting out carbon dioxide just like you and me. Thomas Gilbert, part of a University of Copenhagen team led by Eske Willerslev, told LiveScience, “Some of the bacteria are actually alive.”

How? Well, these bacteria were dormant in the ice, which reduced the amount of damage they took over the years (think Walt Disney). But instead of totally shutting down, they stayed just alive enough to continually repair their DNA (think, uh, Fry from Futurama). P. Buford Price of UC Berkeley told The Scientist that molecules of water trapped between the ice crystals could transport nutrients from the permafrost. Eventually, when things warmed up again, they could wake up and start reproducing again. One can only imagine how bad they wanted it after 600,000 years.

Note also that this means bacteria on Mars, Europa, and other icy astral bodies, if there is any, might still be alive as well.