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Bacterium Alive After 30,000-Year Freeze

Science File | IN BRIEF

February 26, 2005|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.


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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.

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