A study led by ecologists and bioinformatics specialists from the US and Germany has discovered life forms 491 meters below the ocean floor, and even deeper under land: up to 4,375 meters deep.
Scientists analyzed samples from more than 50 locations around the world, collected above and below the Earth's surface, as well as places such as caves and deep-sea hydrothermal vents that form a surface sill.
Surface samples were collected from soil, sedimentary deposits, or water columns, while subsurface samples were extracted from wells, mines, aquifers, or hydraulic fracturing fluids.
In particular, experts are drawing attention to the discovery of species diversity in some underground environments that may even exceed that on the surface. Although it was previously believed that the deeper you go below the Earth's surface, the less energy is available and the fewer cells can survive.
Scientists are specifically identifying the presence of microbes from a taxonomic category in the marine environment — the archaea domain, which, according to the study, became even more genetically rich at depth.
Bacterial diversity in the seabed was unexpectedly high compared to terrestrial ecosystems.
Scientists explain that life in these subterranean worlds occurs on a completely different time scale than on Earth's surface. The selective pressure is very different on land and in the sea. In the absence of sunlight, energy is sparse. It must be harvested from the surrounding materials and their chemical reactions: hydrogen, methane, sulfur, serpentinization, the dead (or living) bodies of neighboring microbes, and even radioactivity.
Scientists admit that for certain environments, such as the sea surface, they had almost too much data, but for other environments, such as caves or soils, there was little or no data.
Currently, experts have a far-sighted conclusion: If life can exist this far beneath the surface of our planet, perhaps it can exist deeper. Understanding deep life on Earth could be a model for discovering whether life existed on Mars, and whether it has survived, — explains ecologist Emil Raff from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the USA.
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