merelygifted:

Potentially Alive 830-Million-Year-Old Microorganisms Found Trapped in Ancient Rock - Science Alert

…  The middle of Australia is desert now, but it was once an ancient salty sea. The Browne Formation is a well-characterized and dated stratigraphic unit from central Australia, dating back to the Neoproterozoic. It includes extensive halite, indicative of an ancient marine environment.

Using a core sample from the Browne Formation extracted by the Geological Survey of Western Australia in 1997, Schreder-Gomes and her colleagues were able to conduct investigations of unaltered Neoproterozoic halite using nothing but non-invasive optical methods. This left the halite intact; which, importantly, means that anything inside had to have been trapped at the time the crystals formed.  …