The Atacama Desert — an arid, unpopulated swath of northern Chile that is home to some of the most perceptive ground telescopes on Earth — is actually teeming with life beneath the ground, according to a team of researchers that recently scrutinized its soils. As LiveScience reminds us, scientists have already found microbial life under the desert’s surface. What we didn’t appreciate until now is the diversity of this life. The team behind this latest finding sampled the soil to a depth of 13.78 feet (4.2 meters) in the desert’s Yungay region, observing different microbial communities across the depths and soil types. The team’s research was published this week in PNAS Nexus.
https://qz.com/chile-atacama-desert-microbial-diversity-mars-1851439628
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