Unknown Species of the Underworld Discovered
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July 24, 2007

Unknown Species of the Underworld Discovered

Cave_world For decades now scientists from around the world have been discovering hundreds of previously unknown species of cave-dwelling creatures. Even so, an estimated 90% of subterranean life has not yet been described. Cave animals are still quite mysterious to the world of science and often have bizarre adaptations and unique traits. Aside from their strange appearances, cave animals also live much longer than their surface counterparts—up to 10 times longer.

Some of the most interesting discoveries come from caves with no access to the outside world, which has allowed its inhabitants to evolve over millions of years undisturbed. Humans have walked straight over these pockets of weird life, without suspecting what lived in the darkness beneath them. Some cave species, which are completely unique to the rest of the world, have a habitat range of only a few square meters!

"Not only are these animals new to science, but they're adapted to very specific environments — some of them, to a single room in one cave," said Joel Despain, a cave specialist who helped explore 30 of the 238 known caves in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks where around 30 new animal species have already been found.

The discoveries included translucent insects with their internal organs clearly visible, a scorpion-like invertebrate, a type of daddy long legs with jaws bigger than its body, and a fluorescent orange spider, among other odd critters.

"Many people will be looking at these trying to find where they fit in the tree of life," said cave biologist Darrell Ubick.

It is relatively rare to find new mammal or bird species on the surface, but caves still hold countless secrets. Many caves are difficult to reach and seldom explored. It is also highly likely that many more underground caves have yet to be discovered, and perhaps some never will be.

A team of construction workers in Romania were drilling 18m (60ft) below Earth's surface when they noticed a large opening in the rock. Christian Lascu, a geologist on the site, went down to investigate. Lascu was shocked at what he found. The construction crew had accidentally bored a hole into a mysterious cave, with no natural opening to Earth's surface. Previously no one knew it was there—or what lived inside.

Of the dozens of species discovered, over 30 were completely new to man.

Biologist Thomas Kane noted the long time the cave animals have had to evolve into unique species saying, "This cave had been completely sealed for more than 5.5 million years."

Cave creatures are usually mostly blind or evolved with no eyes at all. With no outside food source, the Romanian critters had been feasting on each other, with the base food being a grayish-white mat that turned out to be a type of fungi that grew over the walls like “wet Kleenex”.

"When we looked at them [the grayish-white mats] under a microscope, we discovered that they are made up of fungi," he says. "Then we found a peculiar type of bacteria growing in the fungi." According to Kane, these bacteria use water, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide (in the cave's water) to produce food for other cave creatures, similar to how surface plants use carbon dioxide, water, and the Sun's energy to produce food for surface animals.

Recently another subterrean cave was unearthed at a quarry in Israel. The invertebrate animals found in the cave mystified scientists. These species are millions of years old and represent strange variations of both seawater and freshwater crustaceans, along with several variations of land animal species, which may give scientists insights into the process of evolution.

Insights into the weird world of cave creatures has also given hope to those wanting to find subsurface signs of life on during the upcoming probe. Whether or not we find life on Mars, we now know it’s possible for life to exist on sparse, strange diets, with no sunlight and in less than ideal environmental “pockets”.

"You get the feeling you're Lewis and Clark, charting undiscovered territory," said Jean Krejca, a biologist who helped discover the California cave species. "Caves are one of the last frontiers."

Posted by Rebecca Sato






The lava tubes of Mars my be a good choice of locations to explore for signs of life.

I suppose all these wierd animals were buried during the world wide flood at the time of Noah. It is the only explanation since evolution has been debunked for many years by many scientists.

noah's ark was not a couple million years ago u stupid a@# evolution is the key that were we come in and the rest of life on planet earth, if the passage above states that the caves have been undistrubed for millions of years then that should click in your head that the cave animals have been the before humans ever existed
from martinsburg high school, martinsburg,WV

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Ok ..question....

1. you have a supream diety that create EVERYTHING...Correct? (asking all the Bible Thumpers that thumb their nose at science as trying to bring down their GOD)
2. If said being created EVERYTHING why didn't that INCLUDE Evolution?????
Last time I checked EVERYTHING was pretty Inclusive and Meant literally EVERYTHING...so why would you not believe in Evolution too???
Why does it have to be one or the other??? haven't we proven time and again Life as we understand it is Dual in nature???
you don't get to have one thing without another Male/Female Heat/Cold Beauty/Ugly Fat/Thin Black/White and on and on... sooooooo If I happen to believe in a supream higher power I'm supposed to give my brain a lobotomy for also thinking/knowing/believeing in Evolution as a process that allows life to survive our bumbling interfearance ???
I don't know about you but the world I live in changes everyday...flowers evolve or change or grow from one thing into another all the time...Birds we watch them change they learn to survive in places they wouldn't normally want to live but we've forced them to find a way. An arguement can be made for evolution everywhere when you stop thinking of it as Darwin's Cannon of fish from riverbed ....and allow that he was observing deep meaningful Change. He created a theory based on wild speculation for the time and left it up to those that followed to test it's truth and make adjustments accordingly. It's called a learning curve?! I think You need to K.I.S.S. more often (Keep It Simple Stupid) and try to use the Imagination the Good Lord *wink* gave you for something beside's Fear of any and all that is yet unknown.

very few things are absolute..
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely
Everything Dies ... eventually
We as a species exsist In Conjunction with All else not seperated from it but immersed within it.
Change is Good...
If you can Imagine it ..it Can and probably does Exsist somewhere...
If we are All there is ..(looking up at the heavens) Then That is a LOT of Waisted Space!

Just my Opinion (in WI)

Well done king. Could not agree more.

I'm a Bible Thumper of a different kind than king was talking about. In fact, I was thumping my Bible the other day and seeing the diversity of life in Rev. 4, for example I surmised since the earth is teeming with life the universe is also. Or if it isn't, it's our job to fix that.
I came to this article searching for examples of extreme life forms and conditions, and it seems an easy stretch for me to imagine life throughout the universe given the diverse options we have found so far here on earth. Of course, at this time, our search will have to be primarily within our solar system. Once we have discovered a wider range of how life can exist we may be able to detect traces of it beyond our system before we can leave it.
Concerning evolution, our assumption seems to be it takes long periods of time for changes to occur. As I am thumping about my Bible, though, it seems to me that my Good Lord *wink* is at least as capable as the engineer who designed the keyboard I am using to put these letters here. He is also the one who wants life to fill the earth. I don't see why He would have to wait for life to "evolve" to fill a certain niche when He can simply "make it so".
I think we are in for a lot of excitement as we begin to extrapolate the data we have to see where possible life conditions exist in our neighborhood (Mars, Moon, Jupiter, etc.) and hence know what signs to look for as we search further.

So would creatures like this one that's described in this article be seen in MAMOTH CAVE!?!?

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