Just what earth needs. A resurrected 120,000 yr old bug.

Spork is already infested. LOL

Where do people get their anti-science attitudes from these days? It's quite sad really and few seem to realise where it will ultimately lead or how they came to have their own heads filled with such silly views. Bringing bacteria out of dormancy is no big deal. Really. It amazes me to see the whole internet full of "idiot scientists" type headlines. It beggars belief and reflects the shocking state of scientific ignorance that exists today. You should be more worried about amateurs doing genetic engineering in their kitchens or garages.

When glacier ice melts or spills into the sea such organisms are released all the time. The Blood Falls at the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica are a particularly dramatic example (although these are living bacteria as opposed to dormant).



If folks would care to use their inborn sense of wonder and curiosity you'd see why this study is actually very interesting. Aside from the bacteriology, there are all sorts of interesting questions ranging from evolution to astrobiology that these organisms can shed light upon.

Besides, these 120,000 year old bacteria are just youngsters - far, far older specimens have been revived previously. (There was also a claim for a 250 million year old species being cultured after being found dormant inside a salt crystal - although it was a controversial claim)

Let's not forget the stromatolites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite

These are billions of year old fossilized cyanobacteria which probably aided in oxygenating the earth's atmosphere moreso than plants and still provide much of the usable oxygen today as the primary producers.

I've also seen in the lab a differentiated cyanobacterial cell which has a small compartment that helps it in photosynthesis. So, these microbes kinda bridge the gap between prokarya and eukarya which membrane bound organelles being the main difference.


So yeah, 120k year old microbe is still not that old. Most of the known species we know have probably been around for 1000s of years too, but remember we estimate we know about 1% of the microbes contained in 1 gram of soil.

While there's tons of news on microbiology and it has been practiced for 1000s of years from early fermenting practices in BC to pastes made from moldy breads during the medieval ages, the general public seems to think we know all there is to know about microbes with all the BS news reports and discoveries. The father of modern day microbiology was Pasteur who died just before the turn of the 20th century and DNA wasn't discovered until just around the birth of my father in 1948 which wasn't but about 60 years ago or so. The field of microbiology itself is very new in comparison with say physics or other sciences partly because microbiology deals with microscopic materials. So, until the advent of the microscope did we increase our understanding. I, of course, credit microbes with the invention of religion. You can't tell me that if someone got lockjaw back in 5000 BC and bowed up so much that they broke their back, that you wouldn't think that person just got possessed by a demon. Anyway, there's still tons to do in microbiology.