Probing the ecosystem history of an Antarctic lake

Published on November 4, 2009

Antarctica's Lake Vida, a body of brine always covered by at least sixty feet of ice, contains some of the world's oldest organisms. Peter Doran (2008) is co-leading the first drilling through the lake's ice cap to collect about ten feet of core samples to study the present ecosystem and its past history. The project is funded with a $1.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Learn more at EurekAlert.org.