A 500 million-year-old bacteria has been  brought back to life in a laboratory at Georgia Tech in an experiment with  echoes of Jurassic Park's disastrous recreation of the dinosaurs.

The researchers have resurrected a  500-million-year-old gene and inserted it into a modern E Coli  bacteria.

The 'Frankenstein' germ has thrived. In the  lab, the creation has now lived through 1,000 generations.

The scientists hope to find out whether the  'ancient' bacteria will evolve the same way it did 'first time round' - or  whether it will evolve into a different, new organism.

 ‘This  is as close as we can get to rewinding and replaying the molecular tape of  life,’ said scientist Betül Kaçar, a NASA astrobiology postdoctoral fellow in  Georgia Tech.