Space Germs

Sixty-five stories beneath the State of Kansas, there is a salt mine that has corridors that extend all the way to New Mexico. In Hutchinson, there is an entrance to the Salt Museum with and underground train tour of the mine. This place would be curious enough, but recently, this mine has become the focus of attention by micro biologists.
Researchers claim to have found the oldest living organism; A bacteria which seems to have been hibernating in the salt crystals for 250,000,ooo years.
Even more amazing, they have reanimated the dormant bacteria, a 2-9-3 virgibacillus.
The dormant organism is 100 million years older than the dinosaurs.

Now, I am usually a skeptic when it comes to theories of extraterrestrial origins of life on Earth, but I have to agree with Doctor Russell Vreeland, one of the biologists who found the bacteria.

He pointed out that bacteria can with stand the forces of of acceleration that material thrown into space during a meteor impact might generate. This actually could be the basis for a reverse-exogenesis theory.
In other words, Earths microbes might be already in space, sent on a voyage by a prehistoric meteor strike on out planet.

Dr. Vreeland speculated that "When we go to the stars, our microbes will be waiting for us."
Maybe a more down to Earth analogy is the coconut. Coconuts can float in the ocean for quite a long period of time. They have crossed great distances in the Pacific, colonizing it island by island over thousands of years.

The Hutchinson, KS Salt Mine is also where the underground archive for original masters of famous films such as Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz are stored.