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29 Million year old microbes
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It is not unusual for viable microorganisms to be found in salt and coal deposits which are (allegedly) up to 500 million years old. A great deal of documentation exists on the isolation and reactivation of such microbes. These microbes could well be a few thousand years old, but never hundreds of millions of years . Over such length of time, the DNA and other cell building blocks would have long since decomposed. It is inconceivable that microbes should, in a frozen, ‘sleeping condition’ (Cryptobiosis) (and without nourishment), be able to regenerate and ‘repair’ themselves for such a long period of time.
Microorganisms occur practically everywhere in the world. Due to their extremely flexible physiology, they colonise an unprecedented variety of habitats. They are found in volcanic vents, hot springs on the Earth’s surface but also on the deep ocean floor, in the ice, in the Dead Sea as well as symbionts (i.e. in the digestive tracts of higher organisms).
In recent years, however, it has not been unusual also to find microbes in old salt and coal deposits. Many of these sites are attributed to the Permian (250–300 million years ago) or the Upper Precambrian (up to 500 million years old).
Under the strictest security conditions (due to the danger of contamination by present-day microbes) various teams have been able, in various different laboratories, to reactivate so-called ‘ancient microbes’ out of their sleeping condition and to cultivate them (1).
That these microbes really are hundreds of millions of years old is disputed even among the advocates of a billion year old Earth. The following points of criticism are usually cited:
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| a) |
The age of the isolated microorganisms cannot be directly but only indirectly determined via dating of the matrix in which they are enclosed. In the course of this, diffusion cannot be ruled out as a source of error.
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The danger of contamination by recent microorganisms (i.e. those living today) when taking (or processing) samples cannot, even under strictest laboratory conditions, be ruled out. | |
Normally, however, all known sources and ways of contamination are investigated in the publications. Critics should cite concrete, non-investigated possibilities of contamination. Across-the-board accusations of contamination lose credibility in the face of the wealth of data presented (2).
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References:
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| (1) |
Russel H. Vreeland, William D. Rosenzweig und Dennis W. Powers, Isolation of a 250 million-year-old halotolerant bacterium from a primary salt crystal. Nature 407, 19. October 2000, Pages 897–899. |
| (2) |
Harald Binder, Dornröschenschlaf bei Mikroorganismen?, Studium Integrale, October 2001, Page 51 – 55, http://www.wort-und-wissen.de/index2.php?artikel=sij/sij82/sij82-1.html. | |
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