Unexpected life is discovered in a deep, dark Antarctic world

Scientists drilled through over half a mile of ancient, coastal Antarctic ice in 2016. Into the abyss, they lowered a camera and reached the seafloor, glimpsing a freezing, lightless world, hundreds of miles from any typical sources of food. Did they see anything alive?  Yes. Beneath the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf — part of an enormous glacier that floats over the ocean — researchers unexpectedly spotted eerie sponges on stalks and other still unidentified invertebrates clinging to a boulder. Never before had anyone observed such life isolated so far under an ice shelf, a finding the researchers reported Monday in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.  Read more...More about Antarctica, Deep Sea, Science, and Climate Environment