(Newser)
– Researchers working in Antarctica have made an unexpected discovery: colonies of stationary animals – probably sponges and related creatures – attached to a boulder deep under the ice, reports NBC. Boring geologists through the 3,000-foot-thick ice of the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf to take samples of sediment from the ocean floor ran into the rock and sent a camera. “It was a real surprise to see these animals there,” Huw Griffiths, a marine biologist and lead author of the new study documenting the discovery, told CNN. “It’s amazing,” he told NBC, “because no one has ever seen them before.” In the past, small mobile creatures – things like fish, worms, jellyfish and crustaceans – have been found far below the ice, guardian note. But stationary filters did not.
Many scientists believed that this was due to the hostile environment created by total darkness, lack of food sources and freezing temperatures. Sponges and other filters survive by feeding on floating material from plants and animals. The boulder that houses the animals is about 150 miles from the high seas. Based on the currents, the food they eat can come from more than 900 miles away, the researchers say. “It was a real shock to find them there, a very good shock, but we can’t do DNA tests, we can’t find out what they ate or how old they are. We don’t even know if they are new species, but they certainly live in a place we wouldn’t expect them to live, “Griffiths said. guardian. (Read more Antarctic stories.)