Oh, the things my mind locks onto and frets over. From the November issue of Discover magazine I have learned that a team of scientists, led by Rutgers University biologist Paul Falkowski, has succeeded in reviving ancient bacteria found in Antarctic ice samples. I tried to find the article online for a little cut and paste action, but Discover's website either lags the dead tree version quite a bit or just sucks, so I'll just cut the scary parts out with scissors and tape them here.

As Antarctic ice melts, the bacteria frozen inside may revive and be taken up by microbes in the ocean...
"We are watching gene transfer from land into the ocean, introducing something completely different from the last millions of years," Falkowski says. He points out that humans, through global warming, are subtly bringing about a new phase of evolution.

The team was able to get bacteria frozen for 8 million years to reproduce. And those same bacteria—now proven to still be viable—are entering the Earth's oceans in large quantities as runoff from melting glaciers. We take a lot of our food from those oceans, and since modern man has been around for less than 200,000 years, only our ancient, non-human ancestors could possibly have dealt with these bugs before. Even as powerful as modern science is, we don't have a clue what this may mean for us. As for the oceans, Falkowski notes:

"We are potentially on the cusp of a global revolutionary experiment in the microbial world," he says. "These evolutionary changes could be visible 50 to 100 years from now, showing us new genomes of marine organisms."

Yes, evolution will continue with or without us. For some reason I've always found that comforting.