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Scientists Discover Organism that hasn't Evolved in More Than 2 Billion Years

posted by martyb on Tuesday February 03 2015, @04:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the same-old-same-old dept.

AnonTechie writes:

An international team of scientists has discovered the greatest absence of evolution ever reported—a type of deep-sea microorganism that appears not to have evolved over more than 2 billion years. But the researchers say that the organisms' lack of evolution actually supports Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The findings are published online today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientists examined sulfur bacteria, microorganisms that are too small to see with the unaided eye, that are 1.8 billion years old and were preserved in rocks from Western Australia's coastal waters. Using cutting-edge technology, they found that the bacteria look the same as bacteria of the same region from 2.3 billion years ago—and that both sets of ancient bacteria are indistinguishable from modern sulfur bacteria found in mud off of the coast of Chile.

http://phys.org/news/2015-02-scientists-hasnt-evolved-billion-years.html

[Abstract]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/27/1419241112

 
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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by dyingtolive on Tuesday February 03 2015, @05:12PM

    by dyingtolive (952) on Tuesday February 03 2015, @05:12PM (#140744)

    Funnily enough, I was wondering if the organism discovered was Republicans.

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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by hemocyanin on Tuesday February 03 2015, @08:50PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Tuesday February 03 2015, @08:50PM (#140842) Journal

    Now that Democrats have evolved into the New GOP, will they too stop evolving like the Old GOP (aka parody of itself) has?

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04 2015, @02:25AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04 2015, @02:25AM (#140960)

    Here I was thinking it might be a human male

    oh well. will just have to wait another couple M years to see if one evolves.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04 2015, @06:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04 2015, @06:24PM (#141246)

    Funnily enough, I was wondering if the organism discovered was Republicans.

    That's not fair at all. The GOP has demonstrably changed over the years. Just a single obvious example is the ADA. It's a Republican Party's health care plan that is demonized, called Obama-Care, and generally despised by... the Republican Party.

    I might personally use the term devolved, but they certainly have not remained static.