Ancient Ecosystem Discovered Beneath Antarctic Glacier
Scientists have found life in an ecosystem trapped underneath a
glacier in Antarctica for nearly 2 million years. The microbes,
they suggest, are surviving the dark, oxygen-free waters by
drawing energy from sulfur and iron. The findings provide
insight into how life may have survived "Snowball Earth"--
periods when some scientists speculate that the planet was
entombed in ice--and hint at the possibility of life in other
inhospitable environments, such as Mars and Jupiter's icy moon
Europa. Researchers have found microbial life surviving in the
most unusual places: the depths of cold and dark oceans,
seething geothermal vents, and the deepest layers of permafrost.
And ever since scientists discovered Antarctica's dark and
mysterious subglacial lakes in the late 1960s and early 1970s,
they've wondered if microbes could make a life for themselves
there too. But the challenges of drilling through kilometers of
ice and concerns about contaminating these prist