Whats up with this 250 million year old bacteria"?

Question

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/10/18/tech/main242358.shtml

Should we believe that this delicate amino acid based life lasted 250 million years or would it be more congruent to more carefully scrutinize the subjective nature of rock layer dating.

Also, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/01.html

Should we believe that dinosaur soft tissue still flexible and spongy, with blood cells in it could remain for over 65 million years or would it, with the thousands of examples of dinosaur (they called um dragons) art, sculptures, pottery, and written records in almost every ancient culture, assume that dinosaurs lived not so long ago but (as we have seen) extinction took its toll. Also this would again call into question the subjective nature of rock dating.

By subjective nature I mean, If I brought you a chunk of sedimentary rock (supposedly) from the cambrian layer, and I also brought you a chunk from the Jurassic layer, and I brought you a chunk from very recent, Would you be able to tell me the difference or would you need to know what fossils were associated with it so that you could bring in circular reasoning to assist in all aspects of dating it.

Answer 1

This "delicate amino acid based life" is in fact an extremophile, specifically a halophilic archaeon - tough enough to be a good candidate for life on Mars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophil...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halophile

This organism was isolated in 2000:

Vreeland, R., Rosenzweig, W., and Powers, D., 2000, Isolation of a 250-million-year-old halotolerant bacterium from a primary salt crystal: Nature, 407:897-900.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11057...

And named in 2002:

Vreeland, R., Straight, S., Krammes, J., Dougherty, K., Rosenzweig, W. and Kamekura, M. 2002. Halosimplex carlsbadense gen. nov., sp. nov., a unique halophilic archaeon, with three 16S rRNA genes, that grows only in defined medium with glycerol and acetate or pyruvate. Extremophiles. vol6, no6, p445-452.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12486...

By 2004, independent scientists were critically assessing this and similar work:

Pääbo S, Poinar H, Serre D, Jaenicke-Despres V, Hebler J, Rohland N, Kuch M, Krause J, Vigilant L, Hofreiter M. 2004. Genetic analyses from ancient DNA. Annu Rev Genet. 38:645-79.

Today, reports of analyses of specimens hundreds, thousands, and even millions of years old are almost commonplace. But can all these results be believed? In this paper, we critically assess the state of ancient DNA research. In particular, we discuss the precautions and criteria necessary to ascertain to the greatest extent possible that results represent authentic ancient DNA sequences. We also highlight some significant results and areas of promising future research.

http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/...

Criticism were raised and new methods encouraged:

Hebsgaard, M., Phillips, M. and Willerslev, E. 2005. Geologically ancient DNA: fact or artefact? Trends in Microbiology, 13:212-220.

Studies continue to report ancient DNA sequences and viable microbial cells that are many millions of years old. In this paper we evaluate some of the most extravagant claims of geologically ancient DNA. We conclude that although exciting, the reports suffer from inadequate experimental setup and insufficient authentication of results. Consequently, it remains doubtful whether amplifiable DNA sequences and viable bacteria can survive over geological timescales. To enhance the credibility of future studies and assist in discarding false-positive results, we propose a rigorous set of authentication criteria for work with geologically ancient DNA.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob...

By 2005, new evidence for the original claim was published:

Satterfield C., Lowenstein, T., Vreeland, R., Rosenzweig, W. and Powers, D. 2005. New evidence for 250 Ma age of halotolerant bacterium from a Permian salt crystal. Geology, 33:265-268.

The purported oldest living organism, the spore-forming bacterium Virgibacillus sp. Permian strain 2-9-3, was recently cultured from a brine inclusion in halite of the 250 Ma Permian Salado Formation. However, the antiquity of Virgibacillus sp. 2-9-3 has been challenged; it has been argued that the halite crystal and the fluid inclusion from which the bacterial spores were extracted may be younger than the Permian Salado salts. Here we report that brine inclusions from the same layer of salt that housed Virgibacillus sp. 2-9-3 are composed of evaporated Late Permian seawater that was trapped in halite cement crystals precipitated syndepositionally from shallow groundwater brines at temperatures of 17- 37 °C. These results support the 250 Ma age of the fluid inclusions, and by inference, the long-term survivability of microorganisms such as Virgibacillus sp. 2-9-3.

http://www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/?req...

And that's where it stands right now; expect more work in the future. The T. rex sample that you mention, and others like, it are geologically more recent and, if you had read the journal articles, much more believable.

Your argument is based on nothing more than incredulity - you can't believe it so it must not be true - and you use this as a springboard to "call into question the subjective nature of rock dating." This is good science: question everything, make sure your methods and assumptions are rational and reasonable. In fact radiometric dating is much more reliable than you suppose and it has been checked and calibrated to real-world data. So it is not subjective and much more accurate than young-earth creationist websites would leave one to believe. Apparently there are more things in heaven and earth, Jim, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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Lee Spetner don't know much about biology...

"Lee Spetner, a physicist, presented a scientific (mathematical) critique of neo-Darwinism and scientific, but controversial alternatives. He has religious motives, and religious escape routes. He asked non-orthodox but stimulating questions and presented some unorthodox answers. Spetner published in mainstream peer-reviewed scientific journals: Journal of Theoretical Biology in 1964, and Nature in 1970. In that sense he is an insider and contributed to science. At the same time he makes himself an outsider, by ignoring knowledge about speciation. He accepts controversial results about nonrandom mutation and builds his own theory: the 'Non Random Evolutionary Hypothesis' on those controversial results. Spetner explains these results by a mysterious 'set up' of the genome."

http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho36.ht...

http://www.plantbio.uga.edu/~chris/nathi...

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.h...

Answer 2

If your rock samples are igneous rock, then it would be very easy to distinguish them with radiometric dating.

That ancient bacteria is debatable.  It's genome showed it being close to a living species.  The oldest confirmed resurrected ancient bacteria is a ~30 million years old spore preserved in amber.

http://www.microbeworld.org/scientists/a...

Sporulation is an interesting process that makes the bacteria nearly invulnerable..  Boiling them is very ineffective at killing them.

If a non-spore forming bacteria was preserved and still alive, that would be a different story.

I do not know enough about fossilization to comment on your other claim.

Answer 3

Jim, when we talk about ability, we are referring to ability to reproduce as a whole according to species. A 4 year old is a human, and humans have the ability to reproduce. Some don't because they are infertile, or because they are not of child bearing age, this does not mean that humans don't have the ability to reproduce! Go back to my question if you want to see more details that I added onto my page

Answer 4

The age of rock is not determined by circular reasoning.  There are many independent types of radiometric dating using completely different isotopes, and all give correlative results to each other.  This would not be possible if the methods were incorrect, as an incorrect method applied to independent isotopes with different decay rates would give results that contradict with one another.  In addition, there are non-radiometric techniques like ice-core dating that also correlate with the radiometric techniques.  Milankovich cycles depend on nothing other that the orbital mechanics of the solar system, and milankovich techniques also correlate with radiometric techniques.

In short, if you're trying to use the typical creationist claim of 'fossils are dated by rock layers, and rock layers are dated by fossils, so it's just circular reasoning' then you have either been lied to about that and believed it, or you are lying yourself.

As for this 'dinosaur blood' claim I see pop up from time to time, it's another highly misleading argument (intentionally or not).  

1.  Schweitzer et al. did not find hemoglobin or red blood cells. Rather, they found evidence of degraded hemoglobin fragments and structures that might represent altered blood remnants. They emphasizd repeatedly that even those results were tentative, that the chemicals and structures may be from geological processes and contamination (Schweitzer and Horner 1999; Schweitzer and Staedter 1997; Schweitzer et al. 1997a, 1997b). The bone is exceptionally well preserved, so much so that it may contain some organic material from the original dinosaur, but the preservation should not be exaggerated.

The original article specifically mentions: "Looking suspiciously like red blood cells, these mysterious spheres tucked into the blood vessel chambers of a 65-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil could contain fragments of DNA and proteins."  Nonetheless, Schweitzer and Staedter clearly stated in the very first print column "Perhaps the mysterious structures were, at best, derived from blood, modified over the millennia by geological processes. [pg: 55]"  However, they are categorically clear in the conclusion of the article where they state "But more work needs to be done before we are confident enough to come right out and say, "Yes, this T. rex has blood compounds left in its tissues." [Schweitzer and Staedter 1997 pg. 57]"  They have clearly stated they could not even assert that there were residual blood products, but Wieland falsely claimed Schweitzer asserted there were actual cells. The lack of permineralization (the infilling of the intravascular spaces with minerals, and recrystalization of the bone mineral itself) is the reason that Schweitzer could loosely refer to the bone as "not completely fossilized" in The Real Jurassic Park. Wieland grossly exaggerates this as "unfossilized".

2. The bone that Schweitzer and her colleagues studied was fossilized, but it was not altered by "permineralization or other diagenetic effects" (Schweitzer et al. 1997b). Permineralization is the filling of the bone's open parts with minerals; diagenetic effects include alterations like cracking. Schweitzer commented that the bone was "not completely fossilized" (Schweitzer and Staedter 1997, 35), but lack of permineralization does not mean unfossilized.

3. An ancient age of the bone is supported by the (nonradiometric) amino racemization dating technique.

4. Soft tissues have been found on fossils tens of thousands of years old, and DNA has been recovered from samples more than 300,000 years old (Stokstad 2003; Willerslev et al. 2003). If dinosaur fossils were as young as creationists claim, recovering DNA and non-bone tissues from them should be routine enough that it would not be news.

A portion of the dino-blood reply was copy-pasted from here, where you can read a lot more about it - http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur...

You should be very careful in this 'information' you get from sites like Answers in Genesis, as they are well known to present things in a grossly misleading fashion if not outright untrue (I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they don't know better).  This is a perfect example.

edit: hey!  I saw you posted a previous question asking if we've ever observed the generation of new information by a random process.  Too bad you already closed that question, I would have liked to answer there because the answer is YES! we have:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_lon...

This experiment, ongoing for 20 years, showed random mutation in a population of E. coli generate a novel, beneficial trait in the ability to metabolize an abundant new food source.  This also constituted a speciation event since the commonly accepted criteria for determining the species of E. coli is it's inability to metabolize this particular food source.

There are several more reason why this 'we never see new information' argument is wrong here - http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB...

Taken from that page:

"We have observed the evolution of

    * increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991)

    * increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)

    * novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)

    * novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995)

If these do not qualify as information, then nothing about information is relevant to evolution in the first place."

And since I also noticed you post this in a reply to another question:

"Here is a couple of things that would falsify the Christian creation science model.

1. We see new information created itself with purely random causes."

I'm very happy, because now, by your own words, we've falsified the creationist model using your own conditions for falsification.

So thank you, we can stop talking about this nonsense in here, and I don't have to continue seeing you spread false information to those who are trying to learn here.

However, I suspect that you're already trying to figure out a way to rationalize or just pretend this never happened, rather than acting like a true scientist (and an honorable person in general) and following your already-agreed upon condition for falsification.  That's MY prediction to test my theory that creationists do not care about the truth, only about pushing their religion, so let's see if my prediction is confirmed now.