Researchers have revealed that several bodies of ancient animals were discovered during their exploration of a mysterious Antarctic lake. Scientists came across the bizarre remains while breaking through ice in the Mercer Subglacial Lake. The research team have had to drill through 3,500 feet of ice in the lake, which is “twice the size of Manhattan”.
Tthe team told science journal Nature they had not been expecting to discover evidence of life in the buried Antarctic lake.
Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said: “This is really cool. It’s definitely surprising.”
Mr Tulaczyk admitted that he had never seen animal carcasses quite like these before.
The Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) are now trying to answer animals got into the ancient lake and if any are still alive under the surface.
The lake has been covered in a thick mantle of ice for thousands of years.
According to Nature, researchers found the remains of crustaceans and a tardigrade, or ‘water bear’ in the icy depths.
Other creatures that resembled spiders and worms were found in the body of water about 600 kilometers from the South Pole
David Harwood, a micro-palaeontologist in the research team, said the discovery was “fully unexpected”.
He added: “Some things that looked like squished spiders and crustacean-type things with legs, some other things that looked like they could be worms.
“It’s interesting to think that life can exist in really extreme environments.
“If life is still persisting there, that’s important for our thoughts about what we might find out in space.”
There is hope that if life can survive beneath Antarctic ice, then alien life can be found deep inside Mars or on the ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
John Priscu, leader of the project, told Nature: “We don’t know what’s going to be there. That’s what makes it so much fun.”