Scientists Found a Deep-Sea ‘Death Pool’ That Vanished. It May Show How Earth’s First Life Survived
Marine ecologists used to call them “black pools of death.” Only as far back as a decade ago, teal-colored, deep-sea brine pools had been assumed to be oxygen-sapping dead zones, despite the wealth of deeply weird and alien-like “extremophiles” that biologists have found living along their margins. But something was alive within these phenomenally salty undersea lakes—and now researchers have found evidence of a once-active brine pool whose remains may explain how some of Earth’s earliest primordial life survived in the eons before oxygen gas became abundant. According to their new study, conducted with scientists onboard the research vessel (R/V) OceanXplorer, these even-more-extreme extremophiles managed to make this now “extinct” brine pool in the Red Sea their home between roughly 2,000 and 16,000 years ago.
- ▪Marine ecologists used to call them “black pools of death.” Only as far back as a decade ago, teal-colored, deep-sea brine pools had been assumed to be oxygen-sapping dead zones, despite the wealth of deeply weird and alien-like “extremophi
- ▪But something was alive within these phenomenally salty undersea lakes—and now researchers have found evidence of a once-active brine pool whose remains may explain how some of Earth’s earliest primordial life survived in the eons before ox
- ▪According to their new study, conducted with scientists onboard the research vessel (R/V) OceanXplorer, these even-more-extreme extremophiles managed to make this now “extinct” brine pool in the Red Sea their home between roughly 2,000 and
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| Original publisher | Gizmodo |
| Canonical URL | https://gizmodo.com/scientists-found-a-deep-sea-death-pool-that-vanished-it-may-show-how-earths-first-life-survived-2000817331 |
| Publication time | Fri, 25 Sep 2026 15:55:39 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-25T16:00:32.396Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-25T16:00:32.396Z |
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| Cluster | IJ4_v4YgNUS1 · 1 stories |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Marine ecologists used to call them “black pools of death.” Only as far back as a decade ago, teal-colored, deep-sea brine pools had been assumed to be oxygen-sapping dead zones, despite the wealth of deeply weird and alien-like “extremophiles” that biologists have found living along their margins. But something was alive within these phenomenally salty undersea lakes—and now researchers have found evidence of a once-active brine pool whose remains may explain how some of Earth’s earliest primordial life survived in the eons before oxygen gas became abundant.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Gizmodo.
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