Creatures Survive 2 Billion Years Trapped in Rock

The discovery of these mysterious creatures raises hopes of finding life on Mars.

A research team led by geomicrobiologist Yohey Suzuki from the University of Tokyo (Japan) has found a community of microorganisms that not only survived but thrived after 2 billion years of being cut off from everything we consider necessary for life.

The discovery breaks the record for a microbial community surviving a long period of isolation. The previous record was 100 million years.

Green biological dye highlights microorganisms surviving in rock isolated for 2 billion years - Photo: UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

The mysterious, tiny creatures were found inside a rock sample drilled 15 metres underground, part of a large rock mass called the Bushveld Igneous Complex in northeastern South Africa.

The rock mass is a 66,000-square-kilometer intrusion into the Earth's crust, formed about 2 billion years ago from molten magma that cooled below the surface.

In a 30-cm-long sample of clay-rich rock extracted from this core, they found the aforementioned creatures.

Dr. Suzuki and colleagues suggest that the formation and evolution of rocks over time may have been beneficial to their habitability.

It is the clay "encapsulated" in the rock that provides the resources for living bacteria, with organic and inorganic materials that they can metabolize.

However, it is the clay that has sealed off the habitat of these tiny creatures for the past 2 billion years.

The bacterial communities in the rocks will need to be analyzed in more detail, including DNA analysis, to determine whether and, if so, how they evolved during the 2 billion years of isolation from the rest of life on Earth.

According to the authors, the exciting discovery in South Africa gives astrobiologists new hope.

On some planets that are thought to have once had life, there may still be some surviving communities of organisms in the rocks, isolated in the same way and thus not extinct along with terrestrial organisms.

The closest such planet is Mars, which NASA is almost certain was once a habitable world like Earth 3 billion years ago.

According to Lao Dong

Source: https://tienphong.vn/phat-hien-soc-dan-sinh-vat-song-sot-sau-2-ti-nam-bi-nhot-trong-da-post1680549.tpo