Scientists have discovered a collection of strange sponge-like sea creatures living on a boulder under some 1,650 feet of Antarctic ice.
The unidentified lifeforms, detailed Monday in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, were found by a team of geologists drilling through the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, which stretches across part of the Weddell Sea.
“The boulder came from the land and probably dropped off the bottom of the ice shelf floating above,” biogeographer Huw Griffiths of British Antarctic Survey told UPI in an email.
Griffiths, lead author of the paper describing the discovery, said the animals likely colonized the boulder after it fell onto the seafloor.