Researchers are one step closer to unraveling the mystery of the 1918 flu pandemic.

That strain of flu virus killed more people, faster, than all of the great plagues of history combined. Forty million people died worldwide, almost half were young and healthy.

Two years ago, a team of scientists, led by Canadian Dr. Kirsty Duncan, went to search for traces of the virus and found them.

The 1918 influenza pandemic

On the Norwegian island of Spitzbergen, seven coal miners died in the flu epidemic in 1918. They were buried in the permafrost.

The researchers exhumed six of the frozen bodies and took away 92 tissue samples for analysis.

On Tuesday in London, England, the preliminary results were unveiled.

The samples contain a "signal" of the ribonucleic acid, RNA, of the virus. This signal can help virologists unravel the genetic code of the bug.

For Kirsty Duncan it was a somewhat sour day of triumph. She and the Norwegians weren't invited to the press conference for the announcement.

Dr. John Oxford, the virologist who organized the conference, said it wasn't meant as a snub. He said that the meeting was about virology, and not the expedition to Spitzbergen.

Duncan came anyway and demanded that Oxford acknowledge the whole team. Her demand was met and the encounter ended in a guarded truce.