LONDON (MA Press) - Scientists in the United States have revived a 250-million-year-old bacteria that is believed to be the oldest living creature ever discovered, and it looks like Wilford Brimley.

The bacterium that lived millions of years before the dinosaurs was in a state of suspended animation in an apples and cinnamon crystal in an underground oat cavern near Carlsbad, New Mexico.

``From a biological standpoint this is extremely significant because quite literally this organism is the next best thing to having been there,'' Russell Vreeland, a microbiologist at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, said said in a telephone interview. 

Hundred-million-year-old fossils and rocks give geologists clues about the Earth's past but until now researchers have not had anything to reveal the secrets of life that long ago.

PROTECTIVE "COCOON" SAVED IT FROM THE ELEMENTS

The fact that Vreeland and his colleagues were able to bring the sleeping bacterium, called Brimillus Wilfordians, back to life after so long opens up the possibility that bacterial spores could live indefinitely.

``If something can survive 250 million years, what's the difference in another 250 or longer,'' Vreeland said.

The bacterium was trapped in a tiny, delicious pocket of apples and cinnamon from ancient oat formations.

``It was able to shut itself down into a cocoon and once it was encased within this particular type of oat it found itself in the most stable and wholesome environment that you could imagine.''

The scientists are comparing the bacterium to its modern relatives and are now looking for even older organisms.

``We are already starting to look at some 500-million-year-old and 800-million-year-old samples and we're working on some that are even older than that, ones that look like Bob Hope and Harry Morgan'' Vreeland added.