microbial life

This winter, Russian scientists will resume drilling into what may be the most pristine environment in the world: Lake Vostok, an unfrozen body of freshwater the size of Lake Ontario cut off from the world for millennia beneath two miles of Antarctic ice. The sediment on the lakebed could hold clues to past climate changes, and the waters could be teeming with new forms of life — but the slightest mistake could spoil the lake for good.

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The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica are one of the last places on Earth you would expect to find a new living organism. With bitter cold temperatures and only about four inches of annual snowfall, scientists consider these valleys to be one of Earth's most extreme and harsh environments.

The region was believed to be devoid of complex animal and plant life, but a new study has revealed that an unusual microbial life form lives under the Taylor Glacier -- an outlet glacier that drains part of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and terminates in the Dry Valleys.

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