“It was actually a very big surprise to me,” said Brian Schubert, who discovered ancient bacteria living within tiny, fluid-filled chambers inside the salt crystals.

[…]

Schubert, now an assistant researcher at the University of Hawaii, said the bacteria – a salt-loving sort still found on Earth today – were shrunken and small, and suspended in a kind of hibernation state.
“They’re alive, but they’re not using any energy to swim around, they’re not reproducing,” Schubert told OurAmazingPlanet. “They’re not doing anything at all except maintaining themselves.“

This sounds more like Groonkus sapiens than an ancient bacteria.

via yahoo news