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GERMAN SCIENCE WEEKLY HIGHLIGHT-13

January 10, 2005

Under the Earth that's Under the Ocean

https://p.dw.com/p/661i
Image: Max-Planck Gesellschaft

For hundreds of years now, archaeologists have been digging under the land. You, yourself, may have dreamed of being part of that project. There is a romance to exploring the soil under our feet – the remains of generations of humans before us, and prehistoric animals before them, the last artefacts of history, waiting to be found.

How much more romance is there, then, in exploring the ocean.

How much more romance, even, in exploring the floor of the ocean itself.

Over 95% of the ocean's floor is unexplored. Many people – maybe even you – have not even had the idea of digging in there.

The Joides Resolution is a ship on a mission, one of the first of its kind. It drilled beneath the earth at the bottom of the ocean. But the ship didn’t just scrape the surface. It went as far as 420 meters deep into that earth, and found the remains of organisms as old as 35 million years. And also living creatures, eating those leftovers.

Dr. Bo Barker Jørgensen of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology was the German leader of the project. He sailed on the Joides Resolution and will tell you about its amazing journey of discovery.