Evening star., 1951-01-10
Dead Organisms Live
After Millions of Years
Are in Suspended Animation,
Pacific Floor Tests Show
By Thomos R. Henry

Pacific Floor Tests Show
~ By Thomas R. Henry
Organisms which apparently have
lived in state Of suspended animation
for several million years have just been
reported by Navy-sponsored research
expedition in the mid-Paciflc.
They are bacteria, the microscopic.
one-celed plants. which everywhere
lurk below the visible world of life. Re-
gardless of size, they are living things
which, it has always been supposed.
must breathe and eat In order to sur
vive.
But, according to the report to the
Office of Naval Research from the Pa
cific underwater exploring expedition of
the Scripps Oceanographic Institute and
the Naval Electronics Laboratory, they
were able to revive very rapidly millions
of these minute organisms which, so
far as can be determined, have had
no air or nourishment for thousands Of
millenniumS.
Ocean bottom oozes over most Of the
world contain enormous numbers Of
bacteria within a few inches of the
surface. A few feet down they de-
crease very rapidly and soon disappear
altogether Near the surface, of course.
there is plenty for them to eat, chiefly
decaying organic matter.
20-Foot Cores Taken.
The mid-Pacific expedition obtained
cores 20 feet and more long from the
floor of the ocean depths. In the tops
of these cores bacteria were concen-
trated at about 10000 per cubic cent?
orc finll
crease in this number down to 20 feet.
The cores from these depths could be
considered completely sterile. There is
almost no oxygen. There is hardly any
trace of humuS or organic matter.
But when some of this material was
placed in laboratory culture medium
commonly used for the cultivation OF
bacteria. the minute organisms came
to life almost instantly.
ea-bottom ooze accumulates and
hardens very slowly. Fifty million years
or more probably were required for
building up 20 feet of sediment.
The report to the Navy suggests that
the organisms have existed throughout
the time it has taken these deep-Sea
muds to accumulate. They have simply
remained unchanged, nearly If not
quite in a state of completely suspended
animation, through the millenniums.
There certainly has been no increase in
numbers. It is possible that there are
extremely small amounts of energy, the
nature of which is not known, avail
able for the bacteria in the deep muds
and that they have remained at very
low level Of vital activity.
They were deposited, it is suggested,
in the same manner as the sands or
clay or quartz which make up the
greater part of the bottom sediments
The bacteria recovered were of many
species. Some were well-known types
which require plenty of food and oxy-
gen. Perhaps the best known were this
bacteria which produce the foul-smeI-
ing hydrogen sulphide in shallow waters
off the California coast.
The conditions necessary for their
existence are well known They cer-
tainly do not exist in the deep-sea
muds.
Sediments Stratified.
The sediments beneath the sea floor
2 were shown by the cores to be highly
~ stratif1ed, with alternating layers of
different kinds OF material. Some lay
ers were composed entirely of skeletons
OF the one-celled organisms called fora
minifera. Others were fine-grained
muds consisting of clays washed out
from the land and accumulating with
extreme slowness on the sea floor.
These layers, it is believed, in some
cases represent changes in the tempera-
ture OF the waters near the sea surface
through the millenniums During the
ice ages, for example, it is probable
that the waters were so cold that the
foraminifera could not exist and the
only source of sediments was washing
from the land
Previous studies in the Atlantic, for
example, have shown that the tempera-
ture of the surface water must have
f1uctuated by more than ten degrees
over the past several hundred thou
sand years. The Atlantic waters were
very cold 100000 years back, but a
warm spell occurred 100000 years ago,
during the heydey of the dinosaurs on
land
The qualification process, the cores
showed, also has been accelerated by
the sliding of material which has ac-
cumulated on the tops and slopes of
sea mountains. This apparently takes
place irregularly and over a rather
small area at any one time. Clean
washed sand layers. layers of pebbles,
and layers of limy ooze and of clay are
piled on top of each other as slumping
has taken place in different areas.
In SOME localities there were no sedi-
ments at all. The bottom of the sea
was bare rock surface This indicates
that bottom currents were sufficiently
strong to wash the bottom clear Of
debris.