posted 03-06-2002 12:47 PM            

Just a little horror story to whet your appetitie for strangeness.

posted 05-03-2002 12:34 PM               

Strange life form found in ocean
Story filed: 18:59 Wednesday 1st May 2002

A strange new life form has been discovered in the depths of the ocean off the north-east coast of Iceland.

The bugs belong to an entirely new group of microbes and are probably the smallest living things on Earth.

At a mere 400 millionths of a millimetre across, more than six million would fit on the head of a pin.

The microbes are classified as Archaea - one of the three giant branches of life that also include bacteria and eukaryotes, organisms with cell nuclei. Archaea are genetically different from bacteria and many are "extremophiles" that live in the most extreme environments on Earth.

But although Archaea include some very strange primitive life forms, the new group is odder than anything found before and thought to comprise a new category within the domain. Named Nanoarchaeum equitans, the spherical bugs live on the surface of a much bigger Archael organism, Ignicoccus.

German scientists led by Karl Stetter at the University of Regensburg found them 120 metres under the sea off Iceland, in a place where volcanic activity heats the water close to boiling point. The Nanoarchaeota appear to be reliant on their host microbe and unable to survive on their own.

But what the relationship is between the two remains a mystery. Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists say the tiny bugs are clearly not preying on Ignicoccus as parasites.

The two organisms probably lived a symbiotic existence, which meant each was dependent on the other - but how is not known. Direct contact with Ignicoccus appears to be necessary for Nanoarchaeota to grow.
Discussing the discovery in Nature, evolutionary biologist Ford Doolittle and Yan Boucher from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, refer to Nanoarchaeum as "an exciting new creature".

They said: "Although invisible to the naked eye, it is as worthy of our notice as any coelacanth or other macroscopic 'living fossil'."