“I think this entire ice sheet is alive. That has yet to be proven,” said John Priscu, a professor at Montana State University, who has been doing field work in Antarctica for 27 years. What is proven, Priscu said, is that bacteria are in the ice. […] in tiny veins of liquid water that crisscross the solid ice […] In the lab, ancient bacteria from ice samples 420,000 years old, retrieved from more than 2 miles inside the ice sheet, have quickly shown signs of life. “We melt the water, and they grow,” Priscu told Our Amazing Planet.
Above: common East Antarctica underground nematode.
Above: Halicephalobus Mephisto: new species found nearly a mile deep in the earth’s crust in summer 2011.