Currently browsing: Lost City hydrothermal vents

On the marine microbial stage, there appears to be a vast group of understudies only too ready to step in when

Hydrocarbons — molecules critical to life — are being generated by the simple interaction of seawater with the rocks under the Lost City hydrothermal vent field in the mid-Atlantic Ocean.

Black smoker hydrothermal vent systems may have the fire power, but the staying power of seafloor hydrothermal vent systems like the bizarre Lost City vent field — discovered just two and a half years ago — is one reason they may have been incubators of some of Earth’s earliest life, say UW scientists and their co-authors in a recent issue of Science.