Deep beneath the frozen expanses of our planet’s southernmost continent, life is stirring.
Life that was never supposed to be there at all. And scientists have caught it on camera
...completely by accident. Antarctica is not a constant continent, but
an ever shifting mass of ice. On average, Antarctica contains 90 percent of the world’s
glacier ice, and while most of that makes up the desolate expanse that covers Antarctica’s
land, key pieces of it are also hanging off the edge over nothing but ocean,
in what’s called ice shelves. And it’s what’s underneath the ice shelves
that’s surprised us. In Antarctica’s surrounding waters we find all kinds of penguins, seals,
and whales, but these all rely on the open ocean full of krill, fish, and other tasty treats.
Outside of this realm of big predators and
tiny krill, the masters of the coldest, darkest places under the ice shelf are things like
jellyfish, worms, crustaceans: life forms that can move around, and chase after their food.
Or...so we thought. But scientists just found
evidence of a very different kind of life under 900 meters of Antarctica’s ice—
that’s over half a mile. A research team from the British Antarctic Survey initially bored down
into the ice shelf to take a sample of the seabed underneath.
They bumped into a boulder that prevented them from taking their sample, but disappointment
turned into awe when their camera showed them that the boulder was unexpectedly covered
in living creatures. At temperatures around -2.2 degrees celsius
and in complete darkness, these ghostly life forms are the first stationary organisms ever
discovered under an ice shelf. And not only that, but they’re totally defying all our
expectations of what life truly needs to survive. Here is this community of rock-dwelling life,
seemingly thriving 260 kilometers away from the open ocean and as much as 1500 kilometers
away from the nearest source of photosynthesis. We’re not even totally sure what most of
these living things are. The team thinks that many of them could be sponges of some kind,
but as for the rest... they may be totally new species! And I think it’s hard to really
understand from these images just how much this discovery changes.
Seeing significant life like this in places we didn’t think life was possible completely
shifts the way we need to think not only about our world today, but also about the fossil record.
Paleogeologists have used fossils
of organisms like these to determine the positions of ancient ice shelves through eons past so...
discovering them where we couldn't think they could be...
means we may have to rethink some stuff. The team who uncovered this surprise are now
faced with the challenge of trying to find out more. This sampling location is 260 kilometers
from where the researchers can anchor their main ships so getting there is tough.
And again, it's under more than 900 meters of ice,
so...getting samples is gonna require some serious ingenuity.
They're hoping to use a technique called environmental DNA sampling, allowing them to analyze the
genetic material floating in the water around these organisms. Some sampling and further
images could be taken with tiny remote operated vehicles. These techniques will hopefully tell us
what these life forms are; what they eat; how they can survive there; and if there are more
Studying these improbable creatures will help us understand
more about the life forms that may have evolved on earth during periods in
its history where it was covered in ice. It could also help us better understand the complex
dynamics of Antarctic ocean ecosystems, which we are clearly still trying to figure out,
and how these are going to change as our whole planet changes.
And, as always, studying extreme organisms here on earth gives us clues as to what strange
life may be lurking out there in space on some other dark, frozen planet.
So hopefully, scientists will get to explore all of this before the Antarctic ice shelves shift
or collapse in the face of the climate crisis, which could potentially obscure these fascinating new
communities that we've just discovered forever. If you want to learn more on another surprising
discovery lurking below Antarctica (although, a little deeper down in this case), check
out this video here. Keep coming back to Seeker for all the science news that might surprise
you, and if you have questions or comments on this discovery, leave ‘em for us in the
comments down below. As always, thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see ya in the
next one.