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> Microbial Biospheres!
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> New Domain of Life Found in Vent!
> Living Fossils!
Microbial Biospheres!
Whatever their origin, the bacteria that arise from vents now probably have come from a sub-seafloor microbial biosphere.
The sub-seafloor microbial biosphere, shown here as the area enclosed by the white, dotted lines,
may be home for an enormous number of ancient bacteria.
They may live in such profusion in vast, warm seas under the earth's crust that, Thomas Gold of Cornell University has theorized, were they all to emerge, they would form a blanket 1.5 meters (5 ft.) deep over the entire land surface of our planet.
Vent bacteria grow quickly. This photo shows the growth of floc over a formerly barren area in just one year.
This floc looks like a marine plant, but is actually bacteria!
Bacteria are the basis of the hydrothermal vent's food chain. Later, if the vents continue to furnish the chemicals that the bacteria need, there will be a succession of fauna: symbiont tube worms, clams as big as frisbees, grazing limpets, eyeless shrimp, carnivorous crabs, and fantastic fish, such as the pink bithitid of the Galapagos that swims head down-tail up in the mouth of vents.
White crabs cluster near vents
No one is sure how long a vent lasts. It may be a few months, 100 years, or longer. Some vents quit, then start again. No one knows why.
To their amazement, scientists have found that the biomass, or number of creatures per cubic foot, and the diversity of species in an established vent community maybe as high as the biomass and diversity of a rain forest! How could life not just survive, but actually flourish, in an environment with no sunlight, little oxygen, high temperatures, and a concentration of hydrogen sulfide so high that it would kill most life on the earth's surface? Careful study of tube worms provided the answer.
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