Dartmouth Researcher Discovers Life Deep Beneath the Ice

By Elaine Grant on Wednesday, April 22, 2009.

A Dartmouth researcher has discovered microbes living in an ancient reservoir trapped under a glacier in Antarctica. The bacteria are surviving without light or oxygen in an ecosystem that would not seem capable of supporting life.

And as NHPR’s Elaine Grant reports, the findings may help us understand how life could exist on other planets.

Antarctica's Blood Falls. (Courtesy Ralph Maestas)

For years, Jill Mikucki and a team of researchers have been hunting for life in a one and half million year old reservoir hidden deep beneath the ice.

That reservoir sometimes comes to the surface at a place called Blood Falls in Antarctica.

That’s where Mikucki found microbes similar to marine organisms, suggesting that the reservoir was once an open fjord or sea.

But that inlet became covered with glacial ice, forcing the microbes to adapt to their dark, oxygen-less environment.

They metabolize iron and sulfate – essentially making energy out of whatever they can find.

Jill Mikucki says the discovery tells scientists a lot about life in extreme environments – both on earth and, possibly, on Mars and on Jupiter’s moon, Europa.

And that, she says, makes these microbes exciting.