Scientists uncover 1,224 different species in first ever inventory of life at the poles

The world's first inventory of sea and land animals around a group of freezing Antarctic islands has uncovered some 1,224 species, it was revealed today.

A team from the British Antarctic Survey and University of Hamburg spent seven weeks on board the research vessel RRS James Clark Ross studying life on the South Orkney Islands, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The survey - which saw experts combing the land, using scuba divers in the shallows and employing a special sledge with nets up to 1,500 metres long in waters around the island - revealed an area with more life than the Galapagos Islands, an area renowned for its unique species.

Scientists recorded marine and land species, including sea urchins, free-swimming worms, crustaceans, molluscs, mites and birds.

They also painstakingly examined over 100 years of historical records on the flora and fauna in this region.

Five species were also found to be completely new to science, including marine 'woodlice' and moss-like animals.

The team of 23 scientists believes the study provides an important benchmark to monitor how animals will respond to climate change in the future.

The oceans around Antarctica have increased by an average of 1°C in the last 50 years. The atmospheric temperature on the Antarctica Peninsula has increased by 2.5°C over the same time and is one of the most rapidly warming areas on the planet.


Lead author Dr David Barnes of the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey (BAS), has revealed his findings in the Journal of Biogeography to be published this week.

He said: 'If we are to understand how these animals will respond to future change, a starting point like this is really important.

'We were amazed to find so many animals on these islands.

'Of the 1224 species recorded there were 50 types or genus of animals - many more than we’ve found in one place before.

'By having a benchmark of the animals that live here we can now monitor how they will respond to climate change, as they are in one of the most rapidly warming areas on the planet.

'This is the first time anybody has done an inventory like this in the polar regions.'


In an interview with the BBC, he added: 'There is a widely held belief that life is very rich in the tropics and decreases through temperate areas, through to polar regions, which are thought to be barren.

'That is partly because we see life from the land point of view - and when we see the Arctic and Antarctic, we just see ice.

'But below the surface of the sea, it is an incredibly rich environment, and diving there is a bit like diving on a coral reef.'

Studies of animal life around Antarctica often uncover new species as little is known about the area.

Dr Barnes told the BBC: 'This is some of the best-studied land anywhere in the Antarctic, because there have been biologists on it continuously for decades.

'Ironically - when you have a place where you don't find lots of new species, it tells you that you know the life that occurs there fairly well.'

Stefanie Kaiser, from the University of Hamburg, said: 'We never knew there were so many different species on and around these islands.

'This abundance of life was completely unexpected for a location in the polar regions, previously perceived to be poor in biodiversity.'

The study forms part of the Census of Marine Life (COML), a ten-year programme started in 2000 to assess the abundance and diversity of marine life in the world's oceans.

Scientists discover the chance meeting 1.9bn years ago that led to the eruption of life on Earth

A chance encounter about 1.9 billion years ago, led to life on Earth, say scientists.

New research finds that an amoeba-like organism engulfed a bacterium that had developed the power to use sunlight to break down water to make oxygen.

The bacterium could have been intended as prey, but instead became incorporated into its attacker's body, transforming it into the ancestor of every tree, flowering plant and seaweed on Earth today

Paul Falkowski, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Rutgers University in New Jersey says that this single event transformed evolution of life on Earth.

"The descendants of that tiny organism transformed our atmosphere, filling it with the oxygen needed for animals and, eventually humans to evolve."

It was previously believed that such organisms existed on Earth, but the nature of the event has only become clear now, from studies of chloroplasts - which absorb sunlight and use its energy to generate nutrients and oxygen.

"It is an astonishing thought that a single random encounter between two tiny cells so long ago could have had such a huge consequence," said Falkowski.

Nick Lane, a researcher at University College London and author of Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World, said this information had been emerging. He said, "Oxygen energises all life, and makes it big."

"Nothing else can provide the energy needed to fuel the demands of multicellular organism. True photosynthesis evolved only once, and the chance encounter that gave rise to plants also happened just once. These were two freak accidents in the 3.5 billion-year history of life on Earth."

British scientists shed light on mysterious dark matter that makes up most of our universe

It's a question that has baffled scientists for nearly a century - what is the mysterious 'invisible' matter that most of our universe is made of?

While stars and planets make up about 15 per cent of the universe's material, the remainder has been labelled 'dark matter' because it cannot be seen or detected by conventional instruments.

Now a team of cosmologists from Durham University believe they have found a way to detect it thanks to a computer simulation.

The researchers have developed a system that shows the formation and evolution of a galaxy like the Milky Way, which points to where scientists should look to spot dark matter.

The findings published in the journal Nature move researchers a step closer to solving one of science's great unanswered questions.

Carlos Frenk, a cosmologist at Durham University said: 'Discovering what dark matter is, is one of the most fundamental questions scientists can ask.'

'Uncovering the identity of the main component of the universe. That is what this is about.'
Dark matter does not reflect light nor normally shine, but astronomers infer its existence in galaxy clusters by observing how its gravity bends the light given off by even more faraway galaxies. They do not know what it is made of, but think it could be a kind of particle.

The international research team, known as the Virgo Consortium, looked at a dark matter halo - structures surrounding galaxies which weigh a trillion times more than the sun.

Their simulations showed how the galaxy's halo grew through a series of violent collisions between much smaller clumps of dark matter that emerged from the Big Bang.


In the densest part of the halo, the dark matter particles collide at high speed to produce a form of radiation called gamma rays. These gamma rays make the halo glow, giving scientists a potential way to detect dark matter.

The findings mean that NASA's Fermi Telescope should search in the part of the galaxy where the researchers predict dark matter should glow in 'a smoothly varying and characteristic pattern' where it is easier to see, the researchers said.

That location is near the sun, just off the center of the Milky Way, Frenk said.

'What we have shown through a gigantic simulation is where the gamma rays would come from,' he said.

'We have given a blueprint for people on where to look and how the signal should appear.'

Scientists believe 5,300-year-old mummified 'ice man' belonged to unknown branch of human family tree

A 5,300-year-old mummified "ice man" unearthed in the Alps belonged to a previously unknown branch of the human family tree, scientists have discovered.

No trace of the lineage appears to remain today, meaning that the "ice man" - dubbed "Oetzi" - is unlikely to have any descendants.

Oetzi's mummified remains were found in September 1991 in the Eastern Alps near the Austro-Italian border.
He was about 46 years old when he met his violent death. Examinations revealed that he had been wounded by an arrow and possibly finished off with a mace blow to the face.

Since 1998 he has been on display at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy.

Scientists have now built up a complete picture of Oetzi's mitochondrial DNA, which is always passed down to future generations by mothers. This is DNA in the mitochondria, tiny power plants in cells that generate energy.
The team had a surprise when they tried to determine which genetic branch of the human family tree Oetzi belonged to.

Although he fell into a subgroup called K1, his lineage did not match any of the three known K1 "clusters".

Professor Martin Richards, from the University of Leeds, said:

"Our analysis confirms that Oetzi belonged to a previously unidentified lineage of K1 that has not been seen to date in modern European populations.

"The frequency of genetic lineages tends to change over time, due to random variations in the number of children people have - a process known as 'genetic drift' - and as a result, some variants die out.

"Our research suggests that Oetzi's lineage may indeed have become extinct."

The findings appear in the journal Current Biology.