The reality of what lies within our oceans has fascinated people since time immemorial, so it’s no wonder we’ve created countless myths about the watery depths.
But step aside, Atlantis, scientists have discovered a real Lost City beneath the waves, and this one is teaming with life.
The rocky, towering landscape is located west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge mountain range, hundreds of meters below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, and consists of massive walls, columns and monoliths stretching more than 60 meters tall, according to The Independent.
To be clear, it’s not the home of some long-forgotten human civilization, but that doesn’t make its existence any less significant, it said.
The hydrothermal field, dubbed the “Lost City” upon its discovery in the year 2,000, is the longest-lived venting environment known in the ocean, Science Alert reports.
Nothing else like it has ever been found on Earth, and experts think it could offer an insight into ecosystems that could exist elsewhere in the universe.
For more than 120,000 years, snails, crustaceans and microbial communities have fed off the field’s vents, which spout out hydrogen, methane and other dissolved gases into the surrounding water.
Despite the absence of oxygen down there, larger animals also survive in this extreme environment, including crabs, shrimps and eels. Although, they are, admittedly, rare.
The hydrocarbons produced by its vents were not created by sunlight or carbon dioxide, but by chemical reactions way down on the seafloor.
The tallest of the Lost City’s monoliths has been named Poseidon, after the Greek god of the sea, and it measures more than 60 meters high.
Meanwhile, just northeast of the tower, is a cliffside where the vents “weep” with fluid, producing “clusters of delicate, multi-pronged carbonate growths that extend outward like the fingers of upturned hands,” according to researchers at the University of Washington.
