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Many New Species Found Under Antarctica

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Dec 11, 2006 08:32 PM
from the natures-basement dept.
Science News
gt_mattex writes to tell us The Globe and Mail is reporting that quite a few new species have been found in the ocean beneath the Antarctic ice. From the article: "It is too early to say exactly how many new species were discovered in the Antarctic, many in the Weddell Sea, where ice crushed the ship of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton in 1915. The scientists saw more strange creatures than familiar ones, says Ron O'Dor, an expert in octopuses and squid from Halifax's Dalhousie University and the chief scientist in charge of producing the first marine life census of the planet by 2010."
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  • Let me get in my boat before you start research... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by the_tsi (19767) on Monday December 11 2006, @08:36PM (#17202796)
    Is this the initial stage of the Second Impact?

  • Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sneakernets (1026296) on Monday December 11 2006, @08:37PM (#17202804) Journal
    It's been millenia and we still don't know all the life on our planet. I always look forward to articles like this, they really tell us how little we do know.

    • Re:Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LiquidMind (150126) on Monday December 11 2006, @09:09PM (#17203084)
      i've been thinking about that too, especially about the life that resides at the bottom of our oceans....
      how interesting (and suicidal, but bear with me) would it be to somehow drain all the oceans of water just to see what's left over...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by geobeck (924637)

      It's been millenia and we still don't know all the life on our planet. I always look forward to articles like this, they really tell us how little we do know.

      I just finished a Microbiology intro course where the instructor kept stressing that. You think it's amazing how many macroscopic species we are still discovering; that's nothing compared to the unknown species of bacteria that are right under our noses--and that could be quite literal.

      It seems that life on Earth, as far as the number of species

  • "A school of fish the size of Manhattan off the New Jersey coast. About 20 million herring were travelling together."

    That soon we'll find ways to make ocean life go extinct in those parts which so far relativly are protected from our interferance.. With our normal area's of fishing drying up quickly, how long will it take before we go and do our thing there too ... *sigh*

  • Great... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Durrok (912509) <calltechsucks&gmail,com> on Monday December 11 2006, @08:38PM (#17202812) Homepage Journal
    Here comes the Second Impact. Glad I'm a couple hundred miles inland and not living in Japan...

  • ANCIENTS (Score:5, Funny)

    by Joe The Dragon (967727) on Monday December 11 2006, @08:38PM (#17202818)
    IT's the ANCIENT outpost

  • shouldn't it be... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wealthychef (584778) on Monday December 11 2006, @08:42PM (#17202846)
    "octopi and squids"? :-)
  • I get suspicious whenever a creature purported to have gone extinct X million years ago is discovered alive and well.

    It seems to happen with some regularity.

    It seems to me, if you find a fossil of an animal you believe to be extinct, you will probably test it with the assumption it is of relatively old age.

    I think you probably find what you're looking for.

    Anyway, not trying to start a flame war. But that's probably going to happen anyway. ("YOU IGNORANT BASTARD DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW DATING WORKS!!!")

    • I get suspicious whenever a creature purported to have gone extinct X million years ago is discovered alive and well.It seems to happen with some regularity.It seems to me, if you find a fossil of an animal you believe to be extinct, you will probably test it with the assumption it is of relatively old age.I think you probably find what you're looking for.Anyway, not trying to start a flame war. But that's probably going to happen anyway. ("YOU IGNORANT BASTARD DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW DATING WORKS!!!")

      You've

  • Or should that be base 256?
  • "Somebody in this camp ain't what he appears to be. Right now that may be one or two of us. By spring, it could be all of us."

  • Needs pictures (Score:4, Funny)

    by Inverted Intellect (950622) on Monday December 11 2006, @08:50PM (#17202902)
    The article describes some pretty odd creatures.

    I mean, without a picture of that centimeter-in-diameter protozoan, how the hell am I supposed to imagine how it looks like, much less the more important facets of such a discovery... such as how does it taste?
  • how tasty they are.
  • In the dark ocean beneath the Antarctic ice, researchers have found scores of species they've never seen before, including strange jellyfish and other gelatinous organisms that thrive without light

    My god -- it's full of geeks.
  • Yes but have they found any evidence of Elder Things [wikipedia.org] yet? Or at the very least some Shoggoths [wikipedia.org]?

  • New...? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by djupedal (584558) on Monday December 11 2006, @09:31PM (#17203204)
    As in just fell out of the tree of evolution?

    ...bah....

    Those critter are most likely checking out the mini-subs and shaking their heads and thinking "Oh, look! A new species!"

  • Lake Vostok (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Timbotronic (717458) on Monday December 11 2006, @11:06PM (#17203800)
    It'll be interesting to see what they find in Lake Vostok [wikipedia.org], which is a freshwater lake as big as Lake Ontario and has been sealed under Antarctic ice for up to a million years.

    Could be the perfect test for a Cryobot mission to Europa [space.com]
    • So they have about 3 years to catalog all the life in the ocean? ahh hahahhaha

      FTA: This is the sixth year of the marine census

      You mean you didn't bother to read the article? ahh hahahhaha

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by phantomcircuit (938963)
        Actually I already knew how long the study had been taking place. They are attempting to catalog all the life in the oceans when we haven't even cataloged all life in the rain forests, which is a far smaller task. Now when you consider that the surface area (not volume) of the ocean is 75% of the earth, the chances of encountering every creature in the ocean seems ridiculously small, much less the chance that every creature is encountered and properly documented in all of 9 years. The jokes on you.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by TapeCutter (624760)
          What point are you trying to make, should they give up because their ultimate goal will never be reached?
            • yea, I refer to this as the "cut and run" date. At which point we all know the ocean life wins. I think we need to "stay the course." Not set a date that the ocean life can hide until.

    • Oh, that's easy. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jd (1658)
      You label everything as one or more of "sushi", "chowder" or "probably made into soup somewhere". Saves on physiological and genetic analysis, and it's all that Joe Average is likely to care about. (If the average person gave a rat's about conservation or science, we'd be a thousand years more advanced and ten thousand years wiser.)

      Besides, in 15 years or less there won't be enough of a food chain in the oceans to sustain most of the organisms that do still exist and without a gene bank capable of storing t

      • Besides, in 15 years or less there won't be enough of a food chain in the oceans to sustain most of the organisms that do still exist and without a gene bank capable of storing that kind of volume of information there's no possibility of either having any usable data OR being able to revive the ecology once conditions have returned to saner levels. Collecting photos is all fine and good, but in not that long a time that is ALL we'll have, unless serious efforts are made to either conserve or genetically ca

      • Re:Could they be harmful? (Score:4, Funny)

        by MyLongNickName (822545) on Monday December 11 2006, @09:00PM (#17202998) Journal
        Other then that

        Seek also the difference between "then" and "than" ;)

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by css-hack (1038154)

        Sure they could be harmful. In fact, where two species evolve seperately, it is less likely that they'll be able to coexist peacefully. Just look at the species that have been introduced to Australia.

        I think the greater danger here, though, is that humans will disturb or destroy the new-found species or their habitats.

      • You've never been to Australia, have you.

        • Re:Could they be harmful? (Score:5, Funny)

          by jd (1658) <imipak AT yahoo DOT com> on Monday December 11 2006, @09:45PM (#17203304) Homepage Journal
          Everything in Australia is deadly. The spiders are deadly, the snakes are deadly, the crocodiles are deadly, the plants are deadly, the driving in Sydney is definitely deadly, the TV commercials are lethal... I never did find out what happened to those rabbits that escaped from a research facility on a Government-owned island and made it to shore, back in '95. As I recall, they were being used for some research into some lethal pathogen or other. Since there are Australians still alive, I take it that the crisis was brought under control, but that was cutting it a little fine. I guess we can add the Australian Government to things that are lethal, though.

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Instead of listing all of the deadly things about Australia, it's much easier to list the non-deadly things:

            - some of the sheep

            Thanks Terry Pratchett.
          • I remember growing up in adelaide.

            'don't' walk on the grass without shoes'
            'don't lean on the hedges'
            'don't go near the lizards'
            'don't dig in the garden'

            and in Broadbeach

            'don't play with the jellyfish'
            'don't go in the sea without shoes'

            Not that these rules worked especially well on me, I broke almost all of them on a reguler basis, and so did my friends. It's amazing Aussie kids survive to adulthood.

            I came to england at 7, and was shocked to find kids running from pissy little spiders and bee's....
          • And don't forget koalas. They a lurking everywhere waiting for human flesh. Even a small koala can rip you apart in a matter of seconds.
            • myxomatosis was released back in 1950, and suppressed the rabbit population quite thoroughly for a couple of decades before they started to evolve immunity.

              Steady on. You'll start a flamewar with the creationists.

              What if a bunch of rabbits intelligently designed immunity?

      • Re:Could they be harmful? (Score:4, Funny)

        by Fred_A (10934) <fredNO@SPAMfredshome.org> on Tuesday December 12 2006, @05:05AM (#17205630) Homepage
        Naaah. Since they never probably evolve near humans, they couldn't possibility be harmful.
        They could have nasty pointy teeth.

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