850 Mostly Blind, Pale Creatures Discovered Underground {not wingnut bloggers}

[eppur_se_muova]

Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience

livescience.com – Mon Sep 28, 12:41 am ET
Down under in Australia, down underground, scientists have found 850 previously unknown species living in subterranean water, caves and micro-caverns.


These insects, crustaceans, spiders and worms are likely only about one-fifth of the number of undiscovered species the researchers think exist underground amid the harsh conditions of the Australian outback. Two species of blind fish and two of blind eels were also uncovered.


"What we've found is that you don't have to go searching in the depths of the ocean to discover new species of invertebrate animals - you just have to look in your own backyard," said researcher Andy Austin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia.


Only half of the species discovered have so far been named, the scientists announced today. Generically, the animals found in underground water are known as "stygofauna" and those from caves and micro-caverns are known as "troglofauna."


When it came to the water-dwelling stygofauna, small crustaceans dominated at about three-quarters percent of all species, then insects, all beetles, at roughly one-sixth, with other kinds of creatures making up the rest. For the cave-dwelling troglofauna, arachnids dominated at about one-half of all species, with insects at about one-quarter and crustaceans and others finishing the list.
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more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090928/sc_livescience/850mostlyblindpalecreaturesdiscoveredunderground;_ylt%3DAgK3F_zRu_pem0I3Bz5AFBwDW7oF;_ylu%3DX3oDMTN1Ymk1YWluBGFzc2V0A2xpdmVzY2llbmNlLzIwMDkwOTI4Lzg1MG1vc3RseWJsaW5kcGFsZWNyZWF0dXJlc2Rpc2NvdmVyZWR

[BlooInBloo]

1. And I'll thank all the scientists very much to leave my home now.

[Warpy]

2. Every hostile environment they check on this planet

from the bottom of the Marianas Trench to Antarctica to the areas around volcanic vents is teeming with life.

It seems that living things will find Eden in all the places we consider the absolute worst.

It also bodes well for the search for extraterrestrial life, although that life will be hard to spot as long as we cling to our own terms. Forget about communication with it, we can't even communicate with the cetaceans.

[Ready4Change]

3. I'm curious.

I do think life exists elsewhere. Universe is too big, too diverse, for us to be on the only life bearing planet.

My curiosity is about what it takes for life to START.

My curiosity is whether or not life can get it's start under a wide range of conditions. We've seen here on Earth that once life gets started it can adapt to a surprisingly wide variety of conditions. Wider than we had thought possible even two decades ago.

But life started under certain conditions here. We humans couldn't survive those conditions. Life, as it grew, created our current conditions, and spread itself out into the wide variety of conditions in which we are still finding it today.

But so far, we've not found life on other worlds within our system. (Maybe found traces on rocks some surmise came from ancient Mars. Maybe.) If life can develop in other conditions than what existed on ancient Earth, those conditions are likely different than any we've explored so far in our solar system.

We can't get out and exploring fast enough for me.

[Warpy]

4. Actually, there's been some recent research

that suggested that prions (the nasty little things suspected of causing mad cow disease) were an early mechanism for protein replication, something they'd originally thought was accomplished by RNA.

They already know that proteins including nucleic acids form under "primordial soup" conditions of heat, electromagnetic discharge, and enough water and chemicals that would have been found on a cooling planet.

The shocker was that this was accomplished in hours, not years.

I think it likely that the same electrochemical processes have occurred on other planets, as well, and the conceit that we're all alone in a universe as big as this one is the height of arrogance.

I tend to be of the opinion that life is an artifact of planets and that most planets will manage to produce it in some form or other. I am also of the opinion that the challenge when we get there will be in recognizing it since it will have a form and chemistry completely unlike our own.