The JOIDES Resolution drilling vesselIODP-USIOTiny fissures in 3.5-million-year-old rock hundreds of meters below the seabed are home to microbes that gain their energy from the rock itself, according to a paper published in Science today (March 14). The study suggests that the largest ecosystem on the planet depends on energy, not from the sun, but from chemical reactions.
“The fact that you can get viable microbes out of those rock samples—and they’re clearly indigenous; they’re not contaminants—that’s just tremendously exciting,” said Andy Fisher, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was the lead scientist on the drilling vessel.
The oceanic crust of volcanic-derived basalt rock lies below the sedimentary seabed, covers approximately two thirds of the Earth’s surface, and is on average 7 kilometers thick. Although scientists have found evidence of life within this vast expanse of rock, the samples obtained were of crustal fluids, rather than the basalt itself, explained Mark Lever, an ecologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, who led the study. “Ours was the first direct study that conclusively showed that there ...
