Damn, I was hoping for pictures!

Second line.

Originally posted by treemanx


Interesting! Does this also shed light on the possibility of life on other planets developing in similar conditions?

I tend to think so, we find life all over the planet in places that were previously thought uninhabitable. Discoveries like these just go to show that given the chance life can thrive just about anywhere.

I know we're a long way off, I'd like to think years as opposed to decades, but I can't wait to see what we find under the ice of Europa. Microbial would be nice and all but it would be incredible to discover something we could actually see with the naked eye.

edit for grammar x2

[edit on 23-11-2009 by bigern]

[edit on 23-11-2009 by bigern]

Originally posted by bigern[
I know we're a long way off, I'd like to think years as opposed to decades, but I can't wait to see what we find under the ice of Europa. Microbial would be nice and all but it would be incredible to discover something we could actually see with the naked eye.

edit for grammar x2

[edit on 23-11-2009 by bigern]

[edit on 23-11-2009 by bigern]

I was thinking the same thing about Europa. I wonder how closely the conditions match? Earth's deep sea, compared to Europa's? Makes you think!

Yeah , I've always felt it to be Arrogant for us as a People to assume that we know the conditions that make up all life. My main Argument was this very point. Thank you for this Post.

Marine Biologist in Training side talking:

This is a 10 year census, therefore those numbers are not surprising.

I don't know why people tend to compare life in the deep sea to life on other planets. Deep sea life is not anoxic, there is still oxygen present. Most deep sea creatures are awesome and live off of the debris that falls from higher zonation levels and eat other deep sea creatures. Most of these organisms can go without eating for really, really long periods of time. But there still needs to be life closer to the surface, and therefore light enough to create significant amounts of life towards the surface.

You can find pictures by looking separately for all the marine discoveries in the past ten years. There are tons of threads on this website, as well.

In terms of large creatures, the probability is very small in most cases. All vertebrates in the deep sea are quite small. Some invertebrates, specifically isopods, can grow to be rather extraordinarily large in the deep sea. Some tube worms, also invertebrates, are very large and tend to thrive around vents. So... large invertebrate species? Yes. Large vertebrate species? No.

In terms of creatures thought to be extinct, well, we don't know the majority of what's down there to begin with. Therefore, we don't actually have a list of species thought to be extinct from the deep sea, because we didn't really know they existed.

[edit on 11/23/2009 by ravenshadow13]