2020-07-28Scientists pull living microbes, possibly 100 million years old, from beneath the sea
Living microbes revived from ~100 million-year-old seafloor sediments
Researchers recovered oxygen-breathing microbes from deep, nutrient-poor sediments in the South Pacific Gyre. After feeding with simple compounds, cells increased dramatically, showing extreme persistence in low-energy environments.
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- Estuary silt vaults hold dormant oxygen-using colonies that reignite after small nutrient pulses.
- Deep drift basins sustain life on trace oxygen diffusing from surface currents.
- Long-buried clay strata act as memory layers, preserving microbial lineages with minimal division.
- Radiogenic mineral seams provide slow, steady energy to keep subsurface life viable.
