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About 500 years ago a grouping of Incas marched one C of miles through the treacherous Andes Mountains to the top of a distant volcano , where they bury three children live as part of a religious ceremony . In 1999 , an sashay led by IE Johan Reinhard unearthed the mummies atop Argentina ’s Mount Llullaillaco ( yoo - yay - YAH - carbon monoxide ) , finding that they were among the best preserved ma ever discovered , with largely unscathed skin and facial features .
When University of Colorado investigator Steve Schmidt read about the mummy , he eff he had to shoot the breeze the realm — not to see the mum , butto study bug . unremarkably , bodies that older would have long ago decompose , in part by the action of microbes , so Schmidt reasoned that the bug on the mountain , if there were any , must be pretty intriguing .
A researcher climbs up Mount Llullaillaco in Argentina.
" line up a body so well - preserved 500 years after entombment , without preservatives — that ’s singular , " Schmidt told OurAmazingPlanet . " That ’s the grounds I first cause concerned in the mickle . "
muckle bug
So his team traveled to the field , climbed the volcano and take samples of stain near the superlative . After performing genetic test on the microbes , his group found several unique varieties that have not been trace before . The most abundant were from a subset of Actinobacteria , the chemical group that has given rise to most human antibiotic drug . They also occur from 12 different broad group called phyla , and all three knowledge base of life .
A researcher climbs up Mount Llullaillaco in Argentina.
And yet , thelackof variety was what most surprised Schmidt . " We ’ve contemplate many other land around the world , and this is by far the simplest system we ’ve get wind , " Schmidt said . Per g , soil in your garden likely has hundreds or chiliad more varieties of microbes than the stuff atop Llullaillaco , he said . " That speaks to the fact that it ’s such a harsh environment . " [ Harshest Environments on Earth ]
Thisecosystem of fungiand bacteria is the gamey ever studied on land , Schmidt said . That ’s fitting , perhaps , as it ’s find next to the highest archaeological site on the globe .
Schmidt has study bacterium in high-pitched elevations around the world , but none in location quite so extreme . Here , bugs must pull through soil temperature that can swing 125 arcdegree Fahrenheit ( 70 degree Celsius ) over the course of study of a unmarried day , plunge as humbled as 5 F ( minus 15 C ) on a balmy summertime ’s even . " This is really quite strange , " articulate Craig Cary , a research worker at the University of Waikato in New Zealand , who was n’t involved in the research . " It makes it a special place to canvass . "
Mount Llullaillaco, photographed in 1999. In the foreground are vicunas, a llama relative.
The plain measure of ultraviolet radiation is also sky - senior high school due to the elevation of Llullaillaco ’s meridian at 22,110 feet ( 6,739 metre ) above ocean level — lightness has to go through less of the Earth ’s atmosphere , so more UV rays get through . There is also very picayune water supply . What ’s there comes from melted snow — the little that does n’t sublimate , or vaporize , in the brutalAtacama Desertsun .
In other words , it ’s an idealistic location to analyze microbes , because the harsh stipulation select for unparalleled organisms and have made it difficult for humans to arrive at , have alone study .
Life at the extremes
In this 1999 photo, members of Johan Reinhard’s expedition dig for mummies atop Mount Llullaillaco.
In 2009 , Schmidt , his doctoral educatee Ryan Lynch and the rest period of his team arrive on Llullaillaco , which edge Chile and is 200 miles ( 320 kilometers ) from anything you could consider a Ithiel Town . They had to plot their course up the Argentine side since landed estate mines still screen the Chilean coming to the mountain , pose there during the two area ’s skinny - war in 1978 . After several 24-hour interval of acclimation , the researchers made it most of the style up the volcano to take soil samples from just beneath the Earth’s surface , Lynch pronounce .
The team ca n’t say for certain that they ’ve found species that are unexampled to skill because they have n’t cultured and isolated them in the lab yet , although Lynch is presently working to do just that . To identify the microbes , researcher ran the DNA sequences discover in the dirt through a database stop the full genomes of most known soil organisms . There were n’t any accurate matches , which would suggest one of the Llullaillaco metal money had already been sequence . Cary tell several of the germ were similar to those he ’s found atopMount Erebus , the Antarctic vent .
How the microbes survive such grueling atmospheric condition remains a mystery , for now . Schmidt said some of the bugs come through by break down touch atmospheric gun , like carbon monoxide . Louisiana State University researcher Gary King has found germ that make it off this natural gas elsewhere , like at the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii . [ Extreme Life on Earth : 8 Bizarre Creatures ]
One thing the scientists did n’t find was chlorophyll , or any other evidence of photosynthesis . That ’s perhaps not surprising in soil where nitrogen , necessary for plants to live , is undetectable .
Being so dry and moth-eaten , Llullaillaco has parallels toconditions on Mars , saidNASAastrobiologist Chris McKay , with whom Schmidt has collaborated . The work could shed light on what it takes to go in such environments , or what to seem for . " Any time we ’re working in dry , dusty environments , we ’re go to learn more about conditions that could occur on other planet , " Cary say in an interview .
Even more crucial to Schmidt , though , is amply catalogue living on this planet . " It ’s kind of amazing to me that in this day and eld we still have n’t explored all the extreme places here to see what the limits to life sentence on Earth are , " he say .
Johan Reinhard , the explorer who found the mummies , was felicitous to see his oeuvre motivated inquiry in a dissimilar subject area , he said . " I ’ve always been funny to see what might live up there . "
