It came from the deep, a mile below the Earth’s surface, in a place where only bacteria were thought to exist.
It’s Halicephalobus mephisto, a new species of roundworm that radically extends the possibilities of animal life on this planet and perhaps on others.
“Our results expand the known metazoan biosphere and demonstrate that deep ecosystems are more complex than previously accepted,” wrote researchers led by biologist Gaetan Borgonie of Belgium’s Ghent University in a June 1 Nature paper.
“The ability of multicellular organisms to survive in the subsurface should be considered in the evolution of eukaryotes and the search for life on Mars.”
It’s only been two decades since scientists recognized that any life whatsoever could live hundreds or thousands of feet beneath Earth’s surface, a region of extreme pressure, high temperatures and few nutrients.
Now it’s thought that up to one-half of all biological matter exists there, though this newly conventional wisdom holds that subsurface life is strictly the domain of single-celled organisms, not complex animals.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/first-subsurface-animal
