Bacteria revived from ancient materials, including halite crystals, consistently show almost no divergence of sequences by comparison with their modern counterparts!
This is leading mainstream researchers to briefly propose that the modern counterparts have also been dormant for the same time. This is immediatley rejected becasue this would require
all bacterial taxa which have been compared with ancient sources to have had the same dormancy.
The "most scrupulous and well-documented" procedures designed to rule out any chance of contaminaiton with modern sources has shown 250 My old bacteria sample "2-9-3", for example, to be almost identical to modern day
Salibacillus marismortui at RNA and protein coding genes. These should have been significantly changed sequences after 250 My and yet show 99% identity at the DNA
nucleotide level.
quote:
Almost without exception, bacteria isolated from ancient material have proven to closely resemble modern bacteria at both morphological and molecular levels. H. Maughan et al Mol Biol Evol 19: 1637-1639 (2002)
So much for the molecular clock. Either almost all bacteria have hybernated for the last 250 My, despite proliferating today, or maybe these ancient strata are not separated from us by millions of years. The molecular clock may simply measure taxonomic differnce and not time as this data cries out! It of course would measure time if that time had transpired. We do not doubt the principle of the clock but we doubt the reality of the time period.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 10-21-2002]