• This forum is specifically for the discussion of factual science and technology. When the topic moves to speculation, then it needs to also move to the parent forum, Science Fiction and Fantasy (SF/F).

    If the topic of a discussion becomes political, even remotely so, then it immediately does no longer belong here. Failure to comply with these simple and reasonable guidelines will result in one of the following.
    1. the thread will be moved to the appropriate forum
    2. the thread will be closed to further posts.
    3. the thread will remain, but the posts that deviate from the topic will be relocated or deleted.
    Thank you for understanding.​

Geology: 100 million years old and still alive!

Woollybear

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 27, 2017
Messages
9,720
Reaction score
9,697
Location
USA
It seems to me there are several red flags in this report.

e.g. the paper does not report phylogenetic relationships between the reviving organisms and known bacterial phyla. The closest they come is reporting a bit about the in situ community in the mud. (I do not see them rule out the possibility that what *grew* was from contamination. Never mind the acknowledged difficulty cultivating many environmental microbes, and they claim huge success.)

Similarly, bacteria are motile... and mud is wet. 100 million year old sediments, even those 75 meters deep (or whatever it was), can be squiggled into by a determined cell from higher (younger) in the sediment.

The paper may indeed be reporting something important, but ... meh. Not much to write home about.

Sincerely,
Your local environmental microbiologist grump.

p.s. To be clear, I have no doubt at all that bacteria, and archaea, and perhaps protista, can persist, dormant, for remarkable lengths of time. I see no reason why they wouldn't. Life evolves to be stable. I'd like to see an in situ phylogeny, and a phylogeny of the organisms they stimulated, that's all.
 
Last edited:

GeoWriter

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 17, 2014
Messages
146
Reaction score
13
The spectacular survival rate after such long periods of time is a claim wild enough that it will indeed need to be confirmed over the next few years, hopefully with more details about dna of bacterial species. I'm a bit skeptical, though, about bacterial mobility through such deep layers of sediment which are experiencing high sedimentation rates. Clay-rich sediment is notoriously impermeable for even water molecules, let alone something as big as a bacteria. What's more, given the reported absence of nutrients in the sediment (a key premise of the study), the critters would need to pack a lot of lunches to provide the energy for movement through such a long journey and a bacteria just doesn't have enough volume to pack that much.