TAYLOR GLACIER, ANTARCTICA BLOOD FALLS Natural time capsule containing an alien ecosystem

[kristopher]

TAYLOR GLACIER, ANTARCTICA
BLOOD FALLS
Natural time capsule containing an alien ecosystem


This five-story, blood-red waterfall pours very slowly out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys. When geologists first discovered the frozen waterfall in 1911, they thought the red color came from algae, but its true nature turned out to be much more spectacular.

Roughly two million years ago, the Taylor Glacier sealed beneath it a small body of water which contained an ancient community of microbes. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, they have remained there ever since, isolated inside a natural time capsule. Evolving independently of the rest of the living world, these microbes exist in a place with no light or free oxygen and little heat, and are essentially the definition of "primordial ooze." The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the waterfall its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.

The existence ...

Photo spread: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/blood-falls

[bettyellen]

1. Interesting! they expect to find similar ancient life forms trapped under that frozen lake in Russia

Sounds like the opening scene to a horror movie to me.