In 2007, scientists accidentally discovered an ice lake when they examined satellite images of the Antarctic ice sheet and then on December 26 they reached it.
This lake lies at a depth of 1066 meters below the Antarctic ice, and has remained for thousands of years unchanged, until now.
To explore the 15-meter-long lake, researchers from a project called Salsa (short for Antarctica under the Antarctic ice) had to dig a small hole about a kilometer deep in the ice using a hole-sized spout with a water-spray pencil Once the hole has been completed, use a tool to draw samples to the surface.
The team ended up extracting a 1.7-meter nucleus-the longest being extracted from a lake under ice-and six "perfect" sedimentary blocks. They also filled six bottles - a total of eleven liters - with the lake water, and took the first picture of the lake.
The team expected to find microbial life forms in those samples, which were already found, but were surprised by what lay in the mud.
The samples contained the remains of small crustaceans (smaller than poppy seed) and a creature called Tardigrids, a type of eight-leg invertebrates known for its ability to withstand the most severe conditions.
Lake Mercer is the second lake under the ice to reach the scientists. They were also drilled in 2013 to a depth of 792 meters to reach a nearby lake called Lake Wilans, but the samples taken there showed no signs of life, but only microbes .
The new discovery in Lake Mercer suggests that these crustaceans and Tardigrids once lived on the continent and were somehow transported to the lake from nearby mountains (where these creatures were found before). The moving water may have been transported or withdrawn by the glacier as it progressed, According to the journal "Nature" scientific.