Subglacial Lake Drilling Unearths 100,000-Year-Old Life Forms

摘要

Evidence of diverse life forms dating back nearly 100,000 years has been found in subglacial lake sediments by a group of British scientists. Direct sampling of these lakes in the interior of Antarctica continues to present major technological challenges. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey and the Universities of Nor-thumbria and Edinburgh have been searching around the retreating margins of the ice sheet for subglacial lakes that are becoming exposed for the first time since they were buried more than 100,000 years ago because parts of the ice sheet are melting and retreating at unprecedented rates as the temperature rises at the poles.