[danieltillett]

We have pulled living bacteria out of sediment 100 million years old so 17 million years is nothing. More importantly this is just the time for this particular meteorite - people have done the calculations and some meteorites do the trip in around a year.

[Luc]

Woah, amazing.

Here's a fun article about reviving supposedly 250 million year old spores trapped in salt crystals: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~bi1/Bi1__Micro-_to_Macro-Biology...