Animals such as the caterpillar is found far beneath Earth's surface, at a depth of 3.6 kilometers. This is the deepest living animal ever found. Nematode species, called it Halicephalobus Mephisto shows there is life environment where far from our feet stand.
Halicephalobus Mephisto Mephisto has a length of 0.5 millimeters. "Small, but for me this is a major finding," said Tullis Onstott, geomikrobiologi expert from Princeton University in New Jersey. The caterpillars live by eating microbes.
Onstott and Gaëtan Borgonie, caterpillar expert from the University of Ghent, Belgium, found Halicephalobus Mephisto in the gold mines in South Africa. They drilled in the gold mine to take water from the depths. The team found these caterpillars after 31,582 liters of water.
The team also found that the species of caterpillar that has existed since thousands of years. Based on isotopic dating indicates that the species of caterpillar are from between 3,000 and 12,000 years ago. "It indicates the animal has evolved to survive the high heat and pressure,"explained the researchers.
Onstott hope this discovery will inspire other research to find a more complex lives in extreme places, both on Earth and elsewhere.
Onstott research is also the aftermath of the bacterial species found around a depth of 3 kilometers. Onstott want to know another life that eat bacteria and narrow the research to nematodes - known as a form of life on Earth that can survive in various conditions. (Source: National Geographic News, Ars Technica)
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar