34,000-Year-Old Organisms Found Buried Alive!

34,000-Year-Old Organisms Found Buried Alive!

news.yahoo.com

It's a tale that has all the trappings of a cult 1960s sci-fi movie: Scientists bring back ancient salt crystals, dug up from deep below Death Valley for climate research. The sparkling crystals are carefully packed away until, years later, a young, unknown researcher takes a second look at the 34,000-year-old crystals and discovers, trapped inside, something strange. Something ... alive.

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"It's permanently sealed inside the salt, like little time capsules," said Tim Lowenstein, a professor in the geology department at Binghamton University and Schubert's advisor at the time."


I thought this story was interesting and wanted to share it with everybody. We are learning alot about micro-organisms and what environments they thrive in.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Very cool! I love stuff like this. Life is so versatile, and way more resilient than we think, imho. Thanks for sharing

reply to post by liejunkie01

"They're alive, but they're not using any energy to swim around, they're not reproducing," Schubert told OurAmazingPlanet. "They're not doing anything at all except maintaining themselves."

“And waiting... They’re waiting to be released... And then, for the world, it‘s... ZOMBIES!!!!”

Man I love this stuff!

S & F & THANKS!

Encased in salt, yummy. I can't wait to learn more about these organisms, and see if there's any relation to our current extremophiles.

Great News that open amazing scenarios.....about how LIFE can survive in the most terrible environments on Planet Earth and elsewhere......!

Thanks for sharing this news.
S&F.

I don't think the organisms are 34,000 old themselves. Maybe organisms have thrived in 34,000 year old sediment. This would be big, BIG news if actual living things were that old. And you couldn't radio carbon date them, because living cells renew themselves. Can you "count the tree rings" on such things?

Black oil time!

reply to post by Electric Crown


The article clearly states that the organisms have been in hybernation and are not reproducing, and are instead concentrating all thier resources on continuing thier existance.
Thats a clear difference to what you suggest, which would be that these life forms are descended from those which were originaly buried. According to the article, and the fella with a degree and all, thats not the case.

Originally posted by Electric Crown
I don't think the organisms are 34,000 old themselves. Maybe organisms have thrived in 34,000 year old sediment. This would be big, BIG news if actual living things were that old.

There's been lots of living animals found entrapped in coal, dating back thousands of years. These are usually frogs, and when found they sometimes come back to life for a short period of time while suffering from weird defects. A lot of these discoveries were made in the 19th, early 20th century. There's even stories about some miners finding a pterosaur that came back to life for a moment after breaking out of a chunk of coal, then it died (this was mid 1980s I believe).

Strangely I haven't seen much about these stories on the internet; they're all in older books about the unusual.

Very interesting but you know...

Superman put General Zod and the other two in that crystal in space for a reason you know!!!!

If some life-ending cataclysm were to befall the Earth, it's nice to know there are organisms like these, hidden away in some remote corners of the globe, that can renew the cycle of life.

i wonder if they taste or smell any Different

reply to post by silo13


Those ar e the horse like insects in revelations

Good find! Pandora's box?

reply to post by Electric Crown


No, I think they are saying that these are 34,000 years old organisms entrapped in salt bubbles not new organisms in a 34,000 year old environment. They said it could be the oldest living organism on the planet besides Mother Earth herself. This is amazing.

They'll probably start making salt caskets.

wouldnt be great if the entire biological eco-system could be recreated by something just as simple as this.

This would unlock all of the potential if the world ended, and life had to start alllll over even down to the cellular level.

life is fiction guyss

ah, this is great news!
there isn't a year that goes by that we aren't finding new species and life that we had no idea existed the year before! what a salty little world they live in!

as bacteria can communicate, I ca only imagine the universe they live in.
we are the extra dimensional universe in this case.

thanks for sharing!
we need a copy in fragile earth!

The exciting part about this news to me, is that if there were ever life on Mars, even 10's of thousands of years ago, we might still be able to find evidence. Nice find OP.