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

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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @10:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @10:15PM (#140880)

    the fact that mitochondria were at first an individual organism, but then were absorbed by many and then all eukaryote cells is evidence of common descent. there are still prokaryotes though so it's not universal.

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