Friday, 23 April 2010

Giant mat of bacteria found off chilean coast

Off the coast of the atacama desert lies a giant mat of hairlike bacteria,the size of greece.

Resembling fossilized bacterial mats,that go back 2.5 million years,the bacteria lives in water almost oxygen-free,extracting energy from hydrogen  sulphide and feeds on nutrients in the water.

It is estimated that the mat contains hundreds of millions of tonnes of bacteria.

some bacteria are 7 centimetres long.

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