anand
26th January 2005, 08:54 AM
The Telegraph (6.12.2004) reports about the interesting findings of the paper published by NIO's Scientists:
Raghukumar, C.; Raghukumar, S.; Sheelu, G.; Gupta, S.M.; Nath, B.N.; Rao, B.R. Buried in time: culturable fungi in a deep-sea sediment core from the Chagos Trench, Indian Ocean. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, 51(11), 2004, 1759-1768.
Under the news item titled 'Hidden life' G.S. Mudur of The Telegraph reports Scientists discover 430,000-year-old organisms in the Indian Ocean.
It was an unscheduled, almost impulsive, detour to plumb one of the deepest points in the Indian ocean. Geologist Bejugam Nagender Nath had spent four weeks with a team of scientists aboard a ship cruising the central Indian ocean, trying to predict how seabed mining in the future may change the marine ecosystem. On the way back, he proposed a change in the ship?s course to an unexplored underwater canyon called the Chagos Trench.
There, using a winch, the scientists scooped up from a depth of nearly six kilometres a chunk of seabed sediment that resembled a giant slab of dark wet chocolate, dropped it into a sterile chamber, and began to examine it for signs of life.
Now, five years after their detour to the Chagos Trench, the scientists from the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa, have announced their discovery of the oldest known living fungi, buried and lying dormant, in those sediments for over 430,000 years.......
Raghukumar, C.; Raghukumar, S.; Sheelu, G.; Gupta, S.M.; Nath, B.N.; Rao, B.R. Buried in time: culturable fungi in a deep-sea sediment core from the Chagos Trench, Indian Ocean. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, 51(11), 2004, 1759-1768.
Under the news item titled 'Hidden life' G.S. Mudur of The Telegraph reports Scientists discover 430,000-year-old organisms in the Indian Ocean.
It was an unscheduled, almost impulsive, detour to plumb one of the deepest points in the Indian ocean. Geologist Bejugam Nagender Nath had spent four weeks with a team of scientists aboard a ship cruising the central Indian ocean, trying to predict how seabed mining in the future may change the marine ecosystem. On the way back, he proposed a change in the ship?s course to an unexplored underwater canyon called the Chagos Trench.
There, using a winch, the scientists scooped up from a depth of nearly six kilometres a chunk of seabed sediment that resembled a giant slab of dark wet chocolate, dropped it into a sterile chamber, and began to examine it for signs of life.
Now, five years after their detour to the Chagos Trench, the scientists from the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa, have announced their discovery of the oldest known living fungi, buried and lying dormant, in those sediments for over 430,000 years.......