Brent Christner of Louisiana State University, in the US, told
the conference about the microbes living within and beneath the ice on Antarctica.
At the Goldschmidt
conference in Sacramento, California, last week, Orcutt and Jill Banfield of the University of California, Berkeley, presented separate detailed surveys of these
microbes, revealing what kinds of organisms live in such strange habitats and offering tantalising hints
about their lifestyles.