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Perhaps the biggest mystery surrounding Deinococcus radiodurans is the question of why it developed its amazing radioresistance in the first place.  In the modern world, many environments rich in radioactive material exist in which Deinococcae may thrive, but for most of Conan's two billion-year existence, very few such places existed.  So where did it come from?  Some American and Russian scientists have speculated that Conan may have originated in outer space, perhaps on Mars.  Indeed, possible signs of Conan-like bacteria have been found in various places in the solar system, including Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.  Others have suggested that Conan first developed on Earth in scattered areas of higher radiation.  Still others have proposed that Conan's radioresistance developed not in very radioactive ennironments, but in response to other, more common forms of DNA damage on Earth.

Deinococcus radiodurans was discovered in 1956 by A.W. Anderson, a reasearcher at the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station in Corvallis, Oregon.  Anderson and his team had been sterilizing tins of meat using radiation.  They were shocked to discover that despite the massive blast of gamma radiation, some bacteria had still managed to spoil the meat.  Those bacteria were, of course, Deinococcus radiodurans.   The discovery of D. radiodurans shattered the supposed limit to the amount of radiation an organism could withstand.

Although much more is known about Deinococcus than when it was first discovered, the bacterium remains a mysterious and intriguing species.  Questions as to why and how it evolved its remarkable radioresistance have yet to be fully answered.