Buried inside 86 million-year-old red clay, they are surviving on tiny amounts of oxygen - so little that they barely qualify as life. Indeed, the discovery could have implications for the search for life on alien planets, as it implies life may need much fewer resources than thought.
A team from Aarhus University in Denmark, Germany's Potsdam University and the University of Rhode Island collected mud samples from sediment columns deep below the ocean floor, on a cruise along the equator and into the North Pacific Gyre.
Click "source" to read more.
