They are roundworms – nematodes – one of the most successful groups of animals on the planet. H.mephisto and its kin aren’t worms in the sense of the earthworms we’re familiar with. Two of the others came from a similar depth in the Driefontein mine, but the fourth was found 3.6 kilometres down in Tau Tona, the world’s deepest mine. It was just one of four different species that he eventually recovered. Gaetan Borgonie from the University of Ghent changed that by discovering H.mephisto in the Beatrix mine, in a shaft 1.3 kilometres deep. In Sweden, they had found even fewer fungi up 450 metres down. In American, scientists had found a smattering of algae, fungi and amoebae 200 metres below the ground. Until now, this empire of microbes was thought to be free of more complex life. Put every tree, elephant and human on a giant scale, and they’d be balanced by the microscopic masses that lurk underground. There are more microbes in the subsurface (bacteria, and the extreme archaea) than there are up top, and collectively, they might even outweigh all surface life. It is a hot, cramped world, high in pressure and low in oxygen, a far cry from the sun-drenched, wind-swept surface. The deep subsurface refers to anything deeper than 8 metres, below than the reach of rabbit warrens and tree roots. It’s an animal that lives where no other animals were thought to exist, in the rocky underworld known as the “deep subsurface”. It’s no demon of shadow and flame, but it is an incredibly surprising find. Fortunately, the creature that lurks in the Beatrix mine – Halicephalobus mephisto –is just a worm, barely half a millimetre long. So far, this seems like something from a stock fantasy tale, where miners dig “too greedily and too deep”, and release an ancient unspeakable evil. But recently, something living came up with the gold, a creature that has been named after Mephisto, the Devil from the Faust legend. It extends more than two kilometres underground and every year, 10,000 workers extract around 11 tonnes of gold from the mine. The Beatrix gold mine lies a few hours outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, in one of the richest gold fields in the world.
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