Australian Atheists Forum

As LiveScience reminds us, scientists have already found microbial life under the desert’s surface. What we didn’t appreciate until now is the diversity of this life. The team behind this latest finding sampled the soil to a depth of 13.78 feet (4.2 meters) in the desert’s Yungay region, observing different microbial communities across the depths and soil types. The team’s research was published this week in PNAS Nexus.

The living things include cyanobacteria and the extremophilic Actinobacteriota, as well as a nitrogen-fixing class of bacteria called Alphaproteobacteria. According to the team, the porous nature of gypsum crystals forms a microclimate that protects microbes from the ultraviolet radiation overhead, but allows enough light to get through that the microbes can undergo photosynthesis.