I saw a short story on CNN, saying that some researchers had managed to
extract bacteria from the entrails of a bee embedded in amber, and had
successfully cultured it. The claim was that the amber had engulfed the
bee 25 million (?!?) years ago. (I know, shades of Jurassic Park).
Even with forming endospores, that sounds pretty unbelievable. Of course
the news squib gave too little data to follow up on sources. Does anyone
know of this work? I think I heard them say that it was to be published in
Science, but didn't catch the date.
I'd be pretty worried about it being modern contamination, as just one
question.
Kyle L. Webb Dept. of Physics + Astronomy
kwebb at carina.unm.edu University of New Mexico
