The researchers had sunk a borehole, to get a sediment core from the seabed:
While the boulder scuppered their chances of obtaining the core, footage from a video camera sent down the hole captured the first images of organisms stuck to a rock far beneath an ice shelf.
“It’s slightly bonkers,” said Dr Huw Griffiths, a marine biogeographer at the British Antarctic Survey. “Never in a million years would we have thought about looking for this kind of life, because we didn’t think it would be there.” …
Photos and video footage of the boulder show that it is home to at least two types of sponge, one of which has a long stem that opens into a head. But other organisms, which could be tube worms or stalked barnacles, also appear to be growing on the rock. Ian Sample, “Researchers rethink life in a cold climate after Antarctic find” at The Guardian
The paper is open access.
It’s the first time life has been found under such conditions. But, as Alfred Russel Wallace, the first ID nerd, pointed out, this is a World of Life (1914)