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news feature
Nature 415, 828-830 (21 February 2002) | doi:10.1038/415828a
Life in the deep freeze
Helen Gavaghan1
Abstract
Unknown ecosystems and untapped records of the Earth's past may lie hidden in the lonely waters of Antarctica's Lake Vostok. But the lake's millions of years of isolation may be about to end, as Helen Gavaghan reveals.
Had the biologists not intervened, a unique source of data might have been damaged for ever. Drilling innocently through the ice sheets that cover Antarctica, a team of climate researchers at first had no idea that they were also heading towards a valuable biological resource: a huge subglacial lake languishing in near-isolation some 4,000 metres below the ice.
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