Scientists discover ‘strange creatures’ under 900-metre-thick Antarctic ice shelf
- Animals looking like sponges and possibly other unknown species found on boulder on sea floor
- Scientists wonder how life forms could survive, ‘amazingly adapted to a frozen world’
Scientists have discovered “strange creatures” under a 900-metre thick ice shelf in Antarctica, according to an article published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.
The previous theory was that life couldn’t exist in such extremity: no food, freezing temperatures, and complete darkness.
By drilling through ice of the Filchner-Ronne shelf, the scientists accidentally discovered animals looking like sponges and possibly other unknown species attached to a boulder on the sea floor.
The Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf is a massive floating ice sheet spans more than 1.5 million square kilometres, but little has been explored under the ice.
The scientists didn’t set out looking for life. They were drilling through the ice sheet to collect samples from the sea floor. Instead, their camera hit a boulder. When they reviewed the camera’s footage, it revealed this discovery.
“We were expecting to retrieve a sediment core from under the ice shelf, so it came as a bit of a surprise when we hit the boulder and saw from the video footage that there were animals living on it,” said James Smith, a geologist at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).