Salty, viscous water with a yellow hue was extracted from rocks in OntarioCanva The true age of the water was not immediately apparent to researchers - it wasn’t until investigating it further that the team came to realise the true magnitude of their findings. When testing the water for chemicals and bacteria, tiny microbes, the kind only ever seen This type of bacteria had never been recorded before on land, and was one of the first clues that the water source may be much older than first thought. Samples were sent to the University of Oxford and tested using a mass spectrometer. The verifiers believed their equipment, some of the most advanced in the world, had broken when provided an average age of 1.6 billion years old.