“It’s like finding a whole new reservoir of life on Earth,” says Karen Lloyd, an associate professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. “We are discovering new types of life all the time. So much of life is within the Earth rather than on top of it.”
A team of 1,200 scientists from 52 countries in disciplines ranging from geology and microbiology to chemistry and physics have been probing the biodiversity beneath our feet, and discovered a deep ecosystem beneath our feet that's twice the size of the world's oceans.
And, of course, only a tiny fraction of these have been discovered and taxonomically named. Yet understanding this ecosystem and its influences on the Earth system is critically important.
Read more in this article in The Guardian
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