Bacterium Alive After 30,000-Year Freeze
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
A newly discovered life form that froze on Earth about 30,000 years ago has apparently been alive since then and started swimming as soon as it thawed, according to a NASA scientist.
The microscopic organism -- a bacterium called Carnobacterium pleistocenium -- probably flourished in the Pleistocene Age, Richard Hoover of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama reported Wednesday. That would make it a contemporary of woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers.
Hoover found the organism near the town of Fox, Alaska, in a tunnel drilled through frozen ice, soil and rock that is kept at a constant temperature of 24.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
