Community | February 27, 2009 | 25 comments

Odd life found in Great Lakes

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DeliaTheArtist
"Scientists have found some odd life forms in Lake Huron.

Peculiar geological formations are supporting floating plumes and purple mats of microbes dwelling in enclaves of the Great Lake, researchers report. The odd biology is more akin to what is found in some of Earth's most extreme environments.

The mats are located about 66 feet (20 meters) below the surface of Lake Huron — the third largest of North America's Great Lakes — where researchers have found sinkholes made by water dissolving parts of an ancient underlying seabed.

Around these sinkholes are brilliant purple mats of cyanobacteria — cousins of microbes found at the bottoms of permanently ice-covered lakes in Antarctica — and pallid, floating ponytails of other microbial life. The water there is dense, oxygen-free and salty, and therefore hostile to most familiar, larger forms of life in the lakes.

The scientists report that some deep sinkholes act as catch basins for dead and decaying plant and animal matter and collect a soft black sludge of sediment topped by a bacterial film.

These environments are also similar to those around deep-sea hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, where many odd forms of life have also been found.

In the oxygen-depleted water, cyanobacteria carry out photosynthesis using sulfur compounds rather than water and give off hydrogen sulfide, the smelly rotten-egg gas. Where the sinkholes are deeper still and light fails, microorganisms use chemical means rather than photosynthesis to metabolize the sulfurous nutrients."
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25 comments // Odd life found in Great Lakes

  • charfman
    • 0
      charfman  
    • I live on the continental divide, the headwaters of Allegheny / Susquehanna rivers...
      Hillbilly country... The water up here is as clean as the acid rain that supplies it...

    • 2 years ago
  • MildGhost
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  
    • ya'll should see some of the stuff growing in the back bays around here. People have arms and legs rotting off sometimes. One ol'boy got stabed by a bluecrab and half of his foot rotted off. A fishing guide about lost half of his right arm from something he pickedup from the water. There's some nasty stuff happing around here. I think mothernature is getting pissed

    • 2 years ago
  • midsummerman
    • 0
      midsummerman  
    • In the future we will be able to harness microorganisms like these guys to clean up petroleum and maybe even nuclear toxins as well as many other cool things like crazy biocomputers (I have no facts to back this up, just a hunch.)

    • 2 years ago
  • JanforGore
  • MoonLoon
  • clownpuncher
  • dkl165
  • DeliaTheArtist
  • quixotic12
  • MoonLoon
    • 0
      MoonLoon  
    • Sulfate Reducing Bacteria are also found in oil and gas production systems where oxygen has been excluded. I agree that it is a boring subject, however, these little rascals affect our life much more than you can imagine. Hundreds of millions are spent each year in attempts to mitigate their corrosive action and production of Hydrogen Sulfide. There has also been a number of deaths related to closed space entry into vessels contaminated by bacteria and the resulting H2S. There has also been contamination of entire oil/gas reservoirs due to contamination by SRB's. I know I am boring the hell out of everyone. Thanks Delia.

    • 2 years ago
  • dmtdan
  • gldeer
    • 0
      gldeer  
    • If you think there is odd life in the great lakes you should see some of the life around the great lakes like the Navy's boot camp which is on the lower coast of Lake Michigan.

      This story is interesting despite the fact that it combines geology and biology, two subjects that make my eyes glaze over.

      One thing is for certain, we're getting ever closer to finding out what killed the dinosaurs. I'm still sticking with my theory that they all died of skin cancer. The prehistoric lizards that we see today survived because they evolved enough to be resistant to skin cancer or learned to dig a hole and stay in it while it was sunny. The ones that didn't learn to dig a hole or evolve enough to be resistant to skin cancer died off. The T-Rex was at the top of the food chain, it should have survived, but it didn't and there is no way a meteor or something like that would've wiped them all out equally so it had to be something they were all susceptible to.

    • 2 years ago
  • clownpuncher
  • DeliaTheArtist
  • clownpuncher
  • eden49
  • holyshiite
  • clownpuncher
  • holyshiite
  • dkl165
  • PROYECTOarismuca
  • Snails
  • Axeam
  • Gargaryun
    • 0
      Gargaryun  
    • Examples of "odd" life forms like these, just now being discovered, serve to strengthen the scientific arguments that "LIFE" exists elsewhere than this lone planet, since it demonstrates that life can exist beyond the parameters that have previously been quoted as bounderies..."Dammit Jim!, I'm a Doctor, not a Bricklayer!!!"

    • 2 years ago
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