It was only by chance that researchers discovered life under a 900-meter-thick layer of ice in Antarctica.
At the bottom of a borehole they encountered unexpected creatures.
Antarctica - Deep under the ice of the Antarctic, the atmosphere is anything but cozy.
Apparently nothing and nobody should really feel comfortable there.
Wrapped in complete darkness, surrounded by freezing sub-zero temperatures, tiny beings have apparently made themselves comfortable here a long time ago.
Scientists have now discovered forms of life that are adapted to these extreme conditions under the approximately 900 meter thick ice sheet of the Antarctic.
The researchers had actually carried out boreholes for the purpose of soil surveys in the Antarctic (* FR reported).
They came across these beings by mistake, as the scientists
report
in the journal
Frontiers in Marine Science
.
The fact that they encountered life forms in the, as previously assumed, hostile area below the ice shelf was a great surprise for everyone involved.
"It's a little crazy," Huw Griffiths of the
British Antarctic Survey
polar research program
told
The Guardian
.
Life under Antarctica: Two different species discovered so far
In 2015 and 2017, the international polar research team carried out two wells in Antarctica.
They wanted to take sediment samples from the sea floor.
To do this, the researchers drilled through a thick sheet of ice.
They did not reach the sea floor but hit a rock.
They examined him with a camera through a large hole in the ice.
Under the water they discovered organisms a few centimeters small that cavorted on the rocks.
One of the species discovered is about the size of a coin and rounded, the other is elongated and five to ten centimeters tall.
The scientists do not know which groups of organisms these beings belong to, what they eat and when they settled there.
Nor do they know what will happen to living things if the ice shelf breaks over them.
Ice shelves are formed when glaciers push massive sheets of ice into the sea.
According to
planet-wissen.de
, the area of the largest ice shelf is roughly the size of France.
* FR
is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network.