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Frozen Bacterium Has Implications for Mars -NASA

Wed Feb 23, 5:26 PM ET
Science - Reuters
By Deborah Zabarenko
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A newly discovered life form that froze on Earth some 30,000 years ago was apparently alive all that time and started swimming as soon as it thawed, a NASA (news - web sites) scientist reported on Wednesday, in a finding he said has implications for possible contemporary life on Mars.

The organism -- a bacterium dubbed Carnobacterium pleistocenium -- probably flourished in the Pleistocene Age, along with woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers, said Richard Hoover of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

Hoover discovered the bacterium near the town of Fox, Alaska, in a tunnel drilled through permafrost -- a mix of permanently frozen ice, soil and rock -- that is kept at a constant temperature of 24.8 degrees F (minus 4 degrees C).

"When they cut into the Fox tunnel, they actually cut through Pleistocene ice wedges, which are similar to structures that we see on Mars," Hoover said in a telephone interview.

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