Ancient bacteria with modern DNA, problem for evolution?

The report elicited strong skepticism from many quarters. Biological chemists doubted that nucleic acids could remain pristine over such time periods. Even had the bacterium hibernated as a hardy spore, its DNA surely would have broken down over 250,000 millennia, if not from the barrage of ultraviolet light during its long-ago residence on the surface, then from naturally occurring terrestrial radiation over the Earth's evolution.Geologists questioned the age of the fluid inclusions, arguing that certain features of the Salado Formation (the source of the halite crystal) suggested that flaws in the rock had permitted the intrusion of more recent fluid (which, by inference, had carried more recent bacteria into the ancient rock).Geneticists pointed out that one of the bellwether genes that the group had sequenced”one that encodes the so-called 16S ribosomal subunit”was far too similar to its counterpart in another strain of bacteria. According to this critique, either the "ancient" bacterium was actually a contaminant, or its descendants had inexplicably failed to change in the past 250 million years.Yet Vreeland and an expanding circle of collaborators have followed up the original report with publications that seek to counter each of these criticisms. In 2002, he and two West Chester University colleagues reported in the International Journal of Radiation Biology their calculation that the degree of genetic damage caused by normal traces of radioactive potassium-40 in the surrounding rock was not great enough to rule out a quarter-billion years of bacterial survival. Scratch objection number 1.In April of 2005, the three authors from the Nature paper teamed with Tim K. Lowenstein, a geologist at Binghamton University in New York, and his student, Cindy L. Satterfield, in publishing a detailed report in the journal Geology. To test the idea put forth by critics that inclusions in the salt crystals were newer than the surrounding rock, they measured the temperature of original crystallization for samples from the same part of the Salado Formation that yielded Virgibacillus sp. 2-9-3. The team reasoned that if microbe-carrying fluid had recently reached the deeply buried salt deposit and recrystallized, the temperatures of those crystallizations would be similar. Instead, they found the opposite: The results ranged from 17 to 37 degrees Celsius, or about 63 to 99 degrees Fahrenheit, a distribution that suggests seasonal climatic variation. In other words, the crystals that formed around pockets of fluid (and presumably bacteria) were created on or near the surface instead of far underground.A second, more definitive, line of investigation examined the concentrations of various ions in the fluid inclusions. The balance of ions in seawater changes over geological time, so measuring them can provide an approximate date at which the saltwater crystallized. The ion concentrations in the halite inclusions matched those of oceans in the Permian period”a profile that is distinct from the seawater of today and also from larger pockets of trapped brine elsewhere in the Salado. As a final test, the team plans to use an ultrasensitive mass spectrometer to date tiny, individual inclusions by the rubidium-strontium method (87Rb decays into 87Sr with a half-life of 49 billion years). Scratch objection number 2.The third criticism, based on DNA similarities, has been harder to dismiss. Despite a protocol of sterilization and controls that even critics describe as "heroic," contamination remained a potential source of the 2-9-3 bacterium based on its molecular resemblance to current strains. Understandably, Vreeland defends the work against charges of contamination. He even views the genetic objections as the least valid, stating that of all the challenges (geologic, chemical and genetic), "this is by far the weakest of the critiques."

April 11, 2005 ” A new study has confirmed that the brine and salt crystals in which scientists found a controversial 250-million-year-old bacteria truly form a quarter-billion-year time capsule.

In the first place, nothing cited thus far in this thread indicates that Vreeland's original hypothesis concerning the critter being that old has been substantiated.

That is because there is a million times as much confirming evidence for the molecular clock models as there is disconfirming evidence.

On the other hand, there have been an equal or greater number of studies that have not backed Vreeland up

On the other hand, there have been an equal or greater number of studies that have not backed Vreeland up.

In addition, Vreeland himself has yet to replicate the original study - not an unusual circumstance when dealing with ancient DNA.

No, you didn't, in fact. You showed a single article where Vreeland and supporters claimed they had met all objections.

The key item missing is that the Bacillus 2-9-3 strain that Vreeland discovered has yet to be duplicated by any other lab.

Why do YOU consider this to be something weird or damaging to evolution?

So, the central paradox opens up plenty of questions for the biologists here and I'll paraphrase it. We have geological data which interprets these bacteria as being ancient. We have an equal amount of molecular evidence which says they are modern. This incongruence is precisely the kind of falsification test that evolutionists have been harping on about for Lord only knows how long. So, surely this classes as strong falsification for at least one of the methods used in dating the bacteria? Has this data be reconciled, or is it still one of the thorns that remains fixed in the side of evolutionary dogma?

As yet, there is nothing more than the scientific equivalent of Vreeland's say-so.

What do you mean by "replicated"? Be specific. Studies have been conducted to confirm every aspect of the find that can be completed. Do you propose that the exact same bacteria strain must be found again?They found 2 samples originally, right? There have been other finds of ancient bacteria.The primary argument now against the find is that molecular dating techniques place the bacteria as a modern bacteria....in other words, the data is rejected based on the theory rather than the theory being adjusted to the data.