New Zealand scientists announced the discovery of a “hidden world” de animales marinos tras perforar 500 metros de hielo en la Antártida. It is a huge underwater cave where a complete ecosystem of amphibodis is carried out, and small creatures of the same family inhabited by the Karakid, Cancer and Moths.
The discovery of life at such a depth was a complete surprise to experts, who explored an underground river under the Ross glacier platform (the eastern part of the White Continent) to investigate the melt in this region.
A group of small animals were captured under water 500 meters away in Antarctica. Photo: Niwa/Craig Stevens
“Being able to observe and sample this river was like being the first to enter a hidden realm,” he said. guardian How Horgana glaciologist at Victoria University of Wellington and leader of the New Zealand Antarctic Institute, the organization that promoted the expedition.
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In 2020, Hourwan discovered the underground river after analyzing several satellite images of Antarctica, proposing to drill hundreds of meters of ice and locate several cameras on the offshore channel. However, they did not expect to find living creatures.
“We did experiments in other parts of the ice platform and thought things were under control, but this time big surprises appeared,” the professor said. Craig Stevensa physical oceanographer at the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA).
“For a while, we thought something was wrong with the camera, but when the focus improved, we noticed a swarm of arthropods around 5 mm in size’,” he added. “We were jumping for joy because having all those animals swimming around our team meant there was clearly an important ecosystem out there.”
Base camp for the Antarctic Ice Science Drilling Team. Photo: Craig Stevens
While they point out that these animals may not be new to science, it is interesting to know “where their food comes from and why their presence has been so variable during the 10 days” of observation, the oceanographer said.
Similarly, according to the scientific team, the underwater cave where the animals were found looks like a cathedral
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Experts will continue to study this new ecosystem, because they want to understand how nutrients persist in temperature and sea depth. However, they were also concerned that these hidden environments are at risk due to warming due to climate change.
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