8
September 2017
Animals
and plants may be living in warm caves under Antarctica's ice, according to a
study.
Australian
researchers said that Mount Erebus, an active volcano on Antarctica's Ross
Island, is surrounded by caves hollowed out in the ice by steam.
Soil
samples retrieved from the caves have revealed intriguing traces of DNA from
mosses, algae and small animals.
The
research has been published in the journal Polar
Biology.
"It
can be really warm inside the caves - up to 25C in some caves. You could wear a
T-shirt in there and be pretty comfortable," said co-author Dr Ceridwen
Fraser, from the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra.
"There's
light near the cave mouths, and light filters deeper into some caves where the
overlying ice is thin."
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