New Antarctic Ice-loving Anemone Discovered
22 Jan 2014
Using a camera-equipped robot to explore beneath the Ross Ice Shelf off Antarctica, scientists and engineers with the Antarctic Geological Drilling (ANDRILL) Program made an astonishing discovery.
Thousands upon thousands of small sea anemones were burrowed into the underside of the ice shelf, their tentacles protruding into frigid water like flowers on a ceiling.
"The pictures blew my mind," said Marymegan Daly of Ohio State University, who studied the specimens retrieved by ANDRILL team members in Antarctica.
The new species, discovered in late December 2010, was publicly identified for the first time in a recent article in the journal PLoS ONE.