Barbara Sherwood Lollar of the University of Toronto tasted water that had been sealed in rock three kilometres below a Canadian mine for roughly two billion years — water so salty and bitter it carried a flavour shaped entirely before animals, plants, or anything with a tongue had ever existed

Barbara Sherwood Lollar of the University of Toronto tasted water that had been sealed in rock three kilometres below a Canadian mine for roughly two billion years — water so salty and bitter it carried a flavour shaped entirely before animals, plants, or anything with a tongue had ever existed

The strangest part of the story is not only that the water was old. It is that someone tasted it. Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a University of Toronto geochemist whose work has helped define the study of deep ancient groundwater, was part of the team studying water flowing from fractures in the Kidd Creek mine system near Timmins, Ontario. The mine reaches roughly three kilometres below the surface, deep into the Canadian Shield, where water can rem…