Lessons from the Oceans of Earth

• Biologists were greatly surprised by both the extent and nature of the chemosynthetically based communities discovered in 1977 at hydrothermal vents (and later at chemical seeps) in the deep sea.

• A qualitative shift took place in the understanding of life on Earth with the discovery of these communities�a shift that has important implications for the potential for life on (or in) Europa.

• Our understanding of life in the deep sea on Earth is still very much in its youth, for example:

  • No hydrothermal vent communities have yet been studied in either the Indian or Arctic Oceans�the global biogeographic continuum of hydrothermal vent life remains to be drawn.

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