Digging up salt in the middle of the desert ordinarily yields a pretty boring find . As in , lots of common salt . But a team of scientists in Death Valley hauled up a passel more than that — perfectly preserve , millennia - older bacterium .
Luckily , the lifeforms came in peace.—though it ’s knockout not to when you ’re a bacteria trapped in a salt lechatelierite . “ It ’s for good sealed inside the salt , like trivial fourth dimension capsules , ” enunciate explained Professor Tim Lowenstein of Binghamton University .
The bacterium was discover in a sort of suspended animation — not move , not reproducing — just sort of … sitting there . For over thirty thousand years , which makes them one of the oldest forms of life ever discovered on Earth . Their secret to survival ? Algae , and lots of it . Enough food to keep them tend — in nap mode — for all these year . And most fabulously , once they were dissolve out a bit , the bacterium bug out to reproduce again after being removed from their crystallization mobile phone . Tenacity ! [ LiveScience ]
BacteriacrystalssaltScience
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