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Salt crystals grow very quickly, imprisoning whatever happens to be floating -- or living -- nearby inside tiny bubbles just a few microns across, akin to naturally made, miniature snow-globes... Lowenstein said new research indicates this process occurs in modern saline lakes, further backing up Schubert's astounding discovery, which was first revealed about a year ago... Schubert, now an assistant researcher at the University of Hawaii, said the bacteria -- a salt-loving sort still found on Earth today -- were shrunken and small, and suspended in a kind of hibernation state... The key to the microbes' millennia-long survival may be...

BINGHAMTON, NY – Binghamton University researchers recently revived ancient bacteria trapped for thousands of years in water droplets embedded in salt crystals. For decades, geologists have looked at these water droplets — called fluid inclusions — and wondered whether microbes could be extracted from them. Fluid inclusions have been found inside salt crystals ranging in age from thousands to hundreds of millions years old. But there has always been a question about whether the organisms cultured from salt crystals are genuinely ancient material or whether they are modern-day contaminants, said Tim Lowenstein, professor of geological sciences and environmental studies at...