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Published online 4 March 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.642
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The font of hydrothermal life
East Pacific Rise pinpointed as starting point for vent animals.
People may have come ‘out of Africa’, but what about more primitive forms of life? A new extensive survey of all the worms, crabs and other animal life forms catalogued living near hydrothermal vents — jets of hot water escaping from cracks in the ocean floor — suggests that they may have originated in a vent field in the Pacific Ocean.
Charleyne Bachraty, a doctoral student from the University of Montreal in Quebec, and her collaborators propose that the northern East Pacific Rise, near the Galapagos Islands, is the centre of dispersal for the world's vent communities.
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