WB-IITKGP-LIFE

Life existed 1500 m below Earth 65 mn years ago in India,
IIT-KGP discovers
    Kolkata, Jan 21 (PTI) Researchers from IIT Kharagpur
have discovered that life existed 1500 metres below the
Earth's surface around 65 million years ago in India as we
know it now.
    The scientists found microbial - bacterial and
archaeal - life forms at such depths beneath the Deccan Traps
which cover a large part of the Deccan Plateau in Southern and
Western India.
    Archaea is a micro-organism similar to bacteria in
size but radically different in molecular organisation.
    The Deccan Traps were formed by massive volcanic
activities nearly 65 million years ago and believed to be
responsible for mass extinction on our planet.
    What surprised the research team was the presence of
the bacteria and archaea more than a kilometer below the solid
igneous rocks - formed by solidification of lava or magma -
without much of nutritional resources such as water or other
materials to feed on, an IIT KGP statement said Monday.
    In 2014, Prof Pinaki Sar from the Department of
Biotechnology at the IIT KGP initiated this research to study
the geo-microbiological properties of these rocks which
remained disconnected from sun-lit surface environment rich in
oxygen, water, organics and light to drive photo-synthesis.
    Rock cores retrieved from three such exploratory
boreholes were sampled for this geo-microbiological
investigation, the statement said.
    The IIT KGP researchers suggest that the microbes may
have moved down to the lower strata of the Earth through water
flow through fractures in rocks formed due to seismic
activities, the statement said.
    "We cannot confirm at the moment whether the organisms
are still alive though we have been able to make the
endolithic (an organism living between mineral grains of rock)
cells grow in laboratory," Sar said.
    This is the first time that such deep life underneath
the Earth's surface have been explored from India and by an
initiative led entirely by Indians, he said.
    The Deccan volcanism started about 65 million years
back and may have continued till 60 million years ago.
    However, these volcanic activities happened with
several thousand years of time gap which might have allowed
early micro-organisms to occupy such extreme habitats. PTI SUS
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