A team of British researchers discovered diverse life forms dating back to a hundred thousand years in sediments of an Antarctic sub-glacial lake
Scientists were always fascinated by the possibility of life existing below the frozen sheet of ice in the Antarctic. That's what makes a recent discovery all the more interesting. Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), and the Universities of Northumbria and Edinburgh recently discovered diverse life forms dating back to a hundred thousand years in sediments of an Antarctic sub-glacial lake.
A range of major technological challenges with regards to direct sampling of old and dark lakes hidden kilometers beneath the Antarctic ice sheet forced scientists to begin their research around the retreating margins of the ice sheet of sub-glacial lakes. The fact that these ice sheets are melting and retreating at unprecedented rates as the temperature rises at the poles made the excavation easier. The researchers used clean coring techniques to delve into the sediments at the bottom of the lake, which is 93 meters deep and approximately 1.5 km long by 1.5 km wide.
"What was surprising was the high biomass and diversity we found. This is the first time microbes have been identified living in the sediments of a subglacial Antarctic lake and indicates that life can exist and potentially thrive in environments we would consider too extreme," said lead author David Pearce in a press statement.
"The fact these organisms have survived in such a unique environment could mean they have developed in unique ways which could lead to exciting discoveries for us. This is the early stage and we now need to do more work to further investigate these life forms."
The diversity of life discovered in the lake was present in many forms with the majority being fossil DNAs. The DNA provided evidence that many forms of bacteria lived in the lake, including a range of extremophiles, a species which adapts to the most extreme environments. A fossil DNA of the most ancient organisms known on Earth was also discovered.
Many of the species are likely to be new to science, making clean exploration of the remote lakes isolated under the deeper parts of the ice sheet even more important. This new discovery can help shed light on how life forms survive on other planets.
