Extreme lifeform

B

blobrana

Registered Senior Member
"A team of Penn State scientists has discovered a new ultra-small species of bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years within the ice of a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles."

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I suppose it's easy to miss an ultra-small species living 2 miles below the ice... LOL!!!! :p
 
All environments are extreme. Given our homo sapian predelictions these bacteria live in an extreme environment, but for them it is not extreme.
 
Are these species related to the ones that grow in the pores of rock at great depth [2 miles deep] that have been found?

One might wonder if such species are growing in the meltwater at the bottom of Antarctic glaciers.
 
That's what i thought too when i read the OP. I wondered if they resemble the single-celled bacteria clinging to vents...
 
Are these species related to the ones that grow in the pores of rock at great depth [2 miles deep] that have been found?
Click to expand...

No, it's one of this lot:

http://www.bacterio.cict.fr/c/chryseobacterium.html

Interesting group. I don't know if they are all that small.

One of those species was discovered during analysis of the water treatment system on the Mir space station. No one seems to know exactly where it came from, and AFAIK it has never been found on Earth.
 
What size are we talking about? Many biological filters are not smaller than 0.2 microns.
Beside the size quite a number of psychrophilic bacteria are already known, of which many have been isolated in the arctic seas.
 
Thing is I studied these bacteria they are psychrophiles that have basically went to a dormant stage and any life cycles within them is reduced by many times...
 
That got me thinking. Did Noah take more than two fleas, contrary to god's commandment. We have a right to know !
 
Hum,

“Creepy things from beneath the sea are clichés of modern exploration, but the abyss has now produced a surprise so bizarre as to have touched off hot international debate: tiny, mysterious, apparently living creatures far smaller than any known bacterium -- so small as to strain the limits on what is needed for independent life.
Their discoverers call them nanobes (pronounced NAN-obes), because their size is in the realm of nanometers. “

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