The Sage of Discovery

Fossil Fuels XPort by Steve Kocino on Flickr

In 1995 scientists Raul J. Cano and Monica K. Borucki uncovered endospores from a bacteria related to Bacillus sphaericus, a fungal bacteria, in the stomach of a bee. Endospores are dormant spores, surrounded by a thick protein wall, and created by bacteria in response to environmental stress. In this dormant, dehydrated state, Bacillus endospores can withstand heat, radiation, chemical agents, and pressure.

The cool thing was that the bee was a Proplebeia Dominicana, a form of extinct, stingless bee , and it and the bacteria were fossilized in 20 to 45 million year old amber. And, somewhat surprisingly, some bacterial endospores were more or less intact. According to Cano and Borucki,  “In the state of dessication some bacteria may remain in a cryptobiotic state for millions of years.”  To extract the Bacillus, the researchers first chemically sterilized the amber surfaces to eliminate extant bacteria. After placing the resin in liquid nitrogen, they cracked the amber shell under a sealed hood to retrieve the bee’s stomach contents.

But what they did next was really, really cool: they were able to revive the ancient spores. After bacteria was spread on petri dishes, fed, and incubated, it began to colonize. An ancient organism had been brought back to life! (or so it seems). Cano and Borucki’s findings astonished them and raised surprise and skepticism throughout the scientific community. Their results were published in Science.

But the story didn’t end there. Over the next months, Cano revived more specimens using the same method. One particular find was a bacteria related to Saccharomyces, a genus that contains brewer’s or baker’s yeast. Just for fun, Cano and Chip Lambert, Cano’s partner at the Ambergene company, used the Saccharomyces to brew up a batch of Eocene epoch beer to serve at Cano’s daughter’s wedding. The verdict? not a bad flavor, and not bad for a couple of amateurs.

It wasn’t until 2006 that they decided to take their ancient brew commercial. In 2006, Cano and Lambert teamed up with Stumpton and Kelley Brothers Brewing Companies to create Fossil Fuels Beer with their prehistoric yeast. The beverage was launched in 2008. So far, the beer is available for consumption only at these two breweries, but Fossil Fuels is slated for distribution soon.

So when can you have your own taste of pre-history? Keep up with the Fossil Fuels website to find out!

[via Wired] [for another take, check out Time Magazine] OR

Cano, R., & Borucki, M. (1995). Revival and identification of bacterial spores in 25- to 40-million-year-old Dominican amber Science, 268 (5213), 1060-1064 DOI: 10.1126/science.7538699

Recently, the remains of 11,000 year old food silos were found during excavations at Dhra’, near the Dead Sea in Jordan. The discovery was announced in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists who discovered the food storage centers believe that they predate the full domestication of plant food by about 1,000 years and were built to store wild plant food collected by inhabitants. Wild oats and barley were probably part of the stores.

photo by freephotouk

The silos at Dhra’ were constructed of stone and mud and capped with wattle (woven reeds or sticks). They had elevated floors, a technology that promoted air circulation and protected food from rodents. The primary or sole function of these silos was storage, as opposed to living or working space; the buildings were among residential structures, where food processing took place.

These storage units were built and used around a time period when the proto-Neolithic inhabitants of the Jordan Valley were establishing more long-term settlements around areas where food was most available. Like their predecessors in the early Natufian period (15,000 to 12,800 years ago), the inhabitants of this settlement were partially sedentary. Scientists suggest that food storage could be an important precursor to more manipulative techniques of plant domestication. This early ability to keep stores and to plan ahead for the future could have been an important step toward the implementation of agriculture, setting the stage for larger, more sedentary, and class-based civilizations, thereby changing the structure of human society forever.

Kuijt, I., & Finlayson, B. (2009). Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (27), 10966-10970 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0812764106

[via Scientific American]