Even after 100 million years buried in the seafloor, some microbes can wake up. In an analysis of seafloor sediments dating from nearly 102 million to 4.3 million years ago, most of the sampled microbes turned out to be dormant, not dead, researchers report July 28 in Nature Communications. The microbes came from sites beneath the South Pacific Gyre, where there are few of the nutrients needed to fuel phytoplankton blooms that support a cascade of ocean life. As a result, very little organic matter makes its way to settle on the seafloor. But oxygen in the water does seep deep into the sediments. So Japanese researchers wondered whether any aerobic, or oxygen-liking, microbes found there might be revivable.
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