BBC Focus Magazine

[M Paul Lloyd]

CU-Boulder-led team finds microbes in extreme environment on South American volcanoes
Please note that whilst I do not accept the idea that the Atacama desert is 'similar to Mars' (indeed compared with the Red Planet it is a veritable rainforest) I do concede that it is a very hostile environment.

June 8, 2012 Natural Sciences University of Colorado Boulder.
A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for organisms that eke out a living in some of the most inhospitable soils on Earth has found a hardy few.
A new DNA analysis of rocky soils in the Martian-like landscape on some volcanoes in South America has revealed a handful of bacteria, fungi and other rudimentary organisms called archaea, which seem to have a different way of converting energy than their cousins elsewhere in the world.
“We haven’t formally identified or characterized the species,” said Ryan Lynch, a CU-Boulder doctoral student involved in the study. “But these are very different than anything else that has been cultured. Genetically, they’re at least 5 percent different than anything else in the DNA database of 2.5 million sequences.”

More here
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2 ... h-american

[Shadowwolf]

I was just about to post this, good thing I looked and saved myself the embarrassment

[M Paul Lloyd]

We need to arrange pre-posting meetings don't we.