“You could wear a T-shirt in there and be pretty comfortable,” lead researcher Ceridwen Fraser said.
“There’s light near the cave mouths, and light filters deeper into some caves where the overlying ice is thin.”.
Located around and beneath Mount Erebus, an active volcano, the caves have been hollowed out after years of steam travelling through their passages.
The study of the caves, led by the Australian National University, evolved into an analysis of the soil within.
Fraser revealed that it contained traces of DNA from algae, mosses and even small animals that could be living in the underground oasis.
Most of the DNA, Fraser admits, is similar to that of species living on the surface.
“Our study gives us a really exciting, tantalizing glimpse of the sorts of plants and animals that might live beneath the ice in Antarctica,” she said. »