Giant one-celled organisms discovered over six miles below the ocean's surface
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By Jeremy Hance, MONGABAY.com
Imagine a one-celled organism the size of a mango. It’s not science fiction, but fact: scientists have cataloged dozens of giant one-celled creatures, around four inches (10 centimeters), in the deep abysses of the world’s oceans.
But recent exploration of the Mariana Trench has uncovered the deepest record yet of the one-celled behemoths, known as xenophyophores.
Found at 6.6 miles beneath the ocean’s surface, the xenophyophores beats the previous record by nearly two miles.
The Mariana Trench xenophyophores were discovered by dropcams, developed by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and National Geographic, which are unmanned HD cameras ‘dropped’ into the deep ocean to record life at the bottom.
Previous research has shown that xenophyophores are host to a number of multicellular organisms, meaning that the Mariana Trench could be teeming with life.
“The identification of these gigantic cells in one of the deepest marine environments on the planet opens up a whole new habitat for further study of biodiversity, biotechnological potential and extreme environment adaptation,” says Doug Bartlett, the Scripps marine microbiologist who organized the Mariana Trench expedition, in a press release.
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