geekosystem

It's hard to imagine that life exists somewhere on the barren, dry, cold reaches of some place like Mars. It's even harder to look for any, on Mars at least. That's why many scientists have turned to studying the extremophile microbes that live in the most inhospitable places on Earth to discover what kind of off-the-wall, unpredictable survival techniques might be used to survive out in the wastes of Mars, or anywhere else for that matter. By studying extremophiles, researchers from Portland State University have discovered a particularly gritty kind of bacteria that survives by essentially eating iron.

A Lyssianasid amphipod, a shrimplike creature of family Lysianassidae, was found alive by NASA 200 meters below the surface of Antarctica, along with what appeared to be the tentacle of a footlong jellyfish, the Associated Press reports.

Extremophilic bacteria living in extremely cold -- or extremely hot, or extremely salty, or extremely anything -- environments are nothing new, but for the Lyssianasid amphipod or any other multicellular organism to be found alive and swimming in such a hostile clime means biologists have to revise their theories of livability, and perhaps ups the odds of life on other planets: