Devil worm..the deepest living organism ever discovered

Weather of Arabia - The "devil worm" was discovered several miles below the surface of the earth, according to the latest studies, and it is considered the deepest living organism ever.

The new species of nematode - called Halicephalobus mephisto and takes its name in part from Mephistopheles, the demon in the Faust myth - indicates a rich new biome beneath our feet.

Before signs of new worms were discovered at depths of up to 2.2 miles (3.6 kilometers) , nematodes were known to live no deeper than tens of feet (tens of metres). Only microbes were known to inhabit these depths, and they turned out to be the food for these 0.5-millimeter-long worms.

Tullis Onstott, study co-author and geomicrobiologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, said:

"It sounds small, but to me, it's like spotting a whale in Lake Ontario. These creatures are millions of times more massive than the bacteria they feed on."

Onstott and nematode scientist Gaetan Bourgogne of Ghent University in Belgium first discovered Halicyphalopus mephisto deep in a gold mine in South Africa. However, the team wasn't sure if the worms were tracked by the miners, or if they emerged from the rocks naturally.

To be sure, Bourgogne spent a year digging deep wells to look for water furnaces, extracting samples and filtering those samples for water-dwelling nematodes. He searched through 8,343 gallons (31,582 L) until he finally found the worms in several samples of deep rock.

In addition, the team discovered evidence indicating that worms have been present there for thousands of years. They analyzed the isotope ratio in the waters that contained the worms and came up with a date between 3,000 and 12,000 years ago—suggesting that these animals evolved to adapt to and withstand the high pressure and intense heat at depth.

"This discovery may not surprise an enthusiastic nematode scientist like Gaetan, but it sure is amazing to me," Onstott said.

Worms inspire the search for life deep

Onstott hopes the new devil worms will inspire others to search for complex life in the most inhospitable places, whether on Earth or elsewhere.

"People usually think that bacteria are the only organisms that can exist beneath the surface of a planet like Mars," Onstott said. "This discovery says, 'Wait a minute!'"

"We can't ignore the idea of looking for little green worms instead of green microorganisms."