New Scientist
Image: Krumma
Some microbes are happy to hide away from the big, bad world. Joachim Reitner at the University of Göttingen in Germany and colleagues have found the first evidence that microbes could survive inside gas bubbles within volcanic rock.
The team examined lava that had been extruded under water around 390 million years ago, and found curved filaments of minerals lining the inside of bubble chambers. The filaments’ shape and chemical composition suggest they are the remnants of micro-organisms (Geobiology, DOI: 10.1111/j.1472-4669.2007.00131.x).
A layer of cement deposited before the filaments suggests that the microbes probably colonised the lava more than 1000 years after it had solidified. Reitner believes they managed to get deep into the rock via tiny fractures, which would have opened up as the lava cooled quickly under water, and speculates that they fed on reduced iron in the rock. Read more on newscientist.com…
