Just in, scientists have mined ancient dormant microbes from the insides of a colossal crystal mountain cave in Naica, Mexico.
The organisms were in all likelihood enclosed in gypsum shards at the least 10,000 to 50,000 years ago. Heralding yet another example of lifes ability to adapt and survive in the most hostile of environments.
"Other people have made longer-term claims for the antiquity of organisms that were still alive, but in this case these organisms are all very extraordinary - they are not very closely related to anything in the known genetic databases," said Dr Penelope Boston.
The new director of Nasa's Astrobiology Institute in Moffett Field, California, showcased her findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Initially opened by miners looking for silver and other precious metals a century ago, the Naica caves are of a pivotal significance to scientists intrigued by extremophiles; microbes that can survive in seemingly impossible conditions.
The environment is hot (40-60C), humid and acidic. With no light at depth, any lifeform must chemosynthesise to survive. That is, it must gain the energy needed to sustain itself by processing raw rock minerals.
Researchers had discovered microbes living in the walls of the caves, but isolating them from inside the metres-long crystals was a surprise.
These enormous icicles of gypsum have grown over millions of years. They are not perfect. In places, they are even malformed, small voids where fluids collected and became entrapped.
Using sterile tools, Dr Boston and colleagues opened these inclusions and sampled their contents.
Not only did they detect the presence of bacteria and archaea, but they were able also to re-animate these organisms in the lab.
The concern would be that these organisms might simply be the result of contamination, either introduced by the team or the mining operations. However, the Nasa director said that necessary preventive measures were followed.
"Other groups have shown there are lots of viruses in these caves and what that says to me is that these are fully fledged microbial communities that have their viral load just like every other community does. So, that's another aspect of this that argues against casual contamination," Dr Boston told foreign media.
Employed by Nasa as an astrobiologist, she is interested in the relevance of such finds to the search for life beyond Earth.
"The astrobiological link is obvious in that any extremophile system that we're studying allows us to push the envelope of life further on Earth, and we add it to this atlas of possibilities that we can apply to different planetary settings."
Many scientists suspect that if life does exist elsewhere in the Solar System, it is most likely to be underground, chemosynthesising like the microbes of Naica.
Dr Boston said her team was about to submit a paper on the caves to acclaimed journals worldwide.
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