Until recently , most scientist believed that only single - celled animate being were able of enduring living in the blistering , mellow - pressure zone beneath Earth ’s crust . Now they ’ve discovered lilliputian worm ( pictured above ) who live as many as 2.2 geographical mile below terra firma . What else will we find living deep inside the Earth ?
Here ’s a report from this week ’s Nature cartridge :
The subsurface biosphere , which extends more than three kilometer into the Earth ’s crust , host a range of single - celled organisms , but it was thought that the constraints of temperature , energy , O and space would think of that multicellular organisms could not survive at this astuteness . Tullis Onstott and colleagues report the spying of nematode worms , let in one antecedently unknown species , in 0.9–3.6 - kilometer - cryptical fracture water beneath the mines of South Africa . The authors take various stride to ensure that the nematodes were indigenous to the water from the deep subsurface and were not recent surface of mining contaminants .
The worms , which evaluate up to half a millimetre , can tolerate gamey temperatures , regurgitate asexually and preferentially fee on bacteria from the subsurface . These attributes all facilitate adaptation to biography in the subsurface .
If these tiny dirt ball live by feasting on bacteria beneath the surface , what ’s feeding on the worms ? I trust the reply is dragon .
Find out morevia Nature .
BiologyEvolutionExtremophilesScience
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