I'm surprised randman hasn't done this one, its right up his alley...
Source 1 (techie science stuff)
Source 2 (BBC article, a way for the layperson to get the gist)
A good few years ago, bacteria was discovered in crystals buried in New Mexico. It was dated at about 250 million years old. The astonishing thing was that the bacteria entombed in the crystal was still alive! Naturally bioinformaticians clamoured over the bacteria and DNA testing was carried in short time.
The discovery was most unusual. Despite the bacteria predating mammals, its DNA was very modern looking. This bacteria was given the name 2-9-3:
As had been noted in earlier studies, a striking observation by Vreeland, Rosenzweig, and Powers (2000) was that the 16S rDNA of isolate 2-9-3 is 99% identical to that of Salibacillus marismortui, a bacterium isolated from the Dead Sea in 1936 (Arahal et al. 1999 ). In fact, Arahal et al. (1999) identified as S. marismortui three strains with 16S rDNA sequences differing by 0.01%, suggesting that isolate 2-9-3 might also be classified as S. marismortui.
Several ideas were put forward, perhaps Salibacillus marismortui is ancient? That seems to have been countered, maybe evolution rates are slower? Unfortunately if the rates were that slow then that means life was on earth 15Billion years ago....
Because the substitutions between 2-9-3 and S. marismortui are all synonymous, they can be used to reflect the mutation rate. If three synonymous substitutions out of the 1,023 total nucleotides examined (1/619 from recA and 2/404 from splB), thus 0.2% divergence, are representative of the mutation rate since the divergence of 2-9-3 and S. marismortui 250 MYA, then the 121 synonymous substitutions (12% divergence) between B. subtilis and B. cereus would place their last common ancestor at 15 BYA, much longer than the age of the earth.
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?
After some consideration I think Dates and Dating might be best.
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