Beer Brewed From 35 Million-Year-Old Fossils

When the average archeology geek thinks about bringing any type of extinct species back into the modern world, it's hard to get that scene from Jurassic Park where the lawyer gets eaten by a T-Rex out of your mind. However, a non-profit group called Paleo Quest found a way to harness the yeast living on the 35 million-year-old fossil of an extinct whale and turn it into — yup — beer. Bone Dusters Paleo Brew is a beer that's — literally — millions of years in the making.

The experiment began when Paleo Quest went to the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland with the hopes of finding a usable sample of yeast from the swabbing of bones from the extinct protocetid whale fossil. At first, all of the samples were found to be ridden with bacteria — but one sample came back positive with a nutrient-rich solution.

Not only did they end up finding a completely new sub-species variant of yeast, but they made freakin' extinct beer with it! While it's not available to the masses yet, Paleo Brew is looking to make a debut at the Lost Rhino Brew Company in Virginia. Northern Virginia Magazine reports that the beer "tasted fairly sweet, and hovered around 4-to-5-percent alcohol by volume." Clearly life has, uh, found a way.


Jeremy Glass has seen Jurassic Park so many times, but still sweats bullets whenever the velociraptors appear on screen.