1 00:00:52,970 --> 00:00:58,350 I came here for the first time 50 years ago on my honeymoon. 2 00:01:01,950 --> 00:01:08,410 It was certainly not my intention to be unfaithful, but here on these cliffs I 3 00:01:08,410 --> 00:01:15,390 fell under the spell of a mystery, one that has not released her grip 4 00:01:15,390 --> 00:01:16,990 in all these years. 5 00:01:32,270 --> 00:01:38,890 I was just a young geologist, fascinated by the layer of rocks thrust 6 00:01:38,890 --> 00:01:43,070 up from the deep oceans millions of years ago. 7 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:20,220 Here is where I found the very strange fossilized burrows of an animal that 8 00:02:20,220 --> 00:02:23,560 lived hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs. 9 00:02:26,700 --> 00:02:32,860 Only now, after 50 years, do we have a chance to solve this great mystery and 10 00:02:32,860 --> 00:02:39,200 maybe catch the oldest living fossil on Earth, Palaeodiction nodosum. 11 00:02:56,520 --> 00:02:58,280 the research vessel Atlantis. 12 00:02:58,980 --> 00:03:05,200 Destination is the mid -Atlantic ridge system, 500 miles ahead and 12 ,000 feet 13 00:03:05,200 --> 00:03:11,640 down. On board are some 58 sailors, engineers, and scientists, 14 00:03:11,720 --> 00:03:17,220 including geologist Peter Rona and paleontologist Dolph Seiliger. 15 00:03:18,600 --> 00:03:21,100 It was Peter Rona. 16 00:03:21,580 --> 00:03:26,020 who found mysterious patterns of holes on the deep sea floor. 17 00:03:26,680 --> 00:03:33,400 After many letters back and forth, here we were, two old fossils with a 18 00:03:33,400 --> 00:03:36,680 chance to solve a wonderful puzzle of science. 19 00:03:52,560 --> 00:03:54,540 The deep ocean submersible Alvin. 20 00:03:55,320 --> 00:03:59,420 She has spent more hours in the deep sea than all of the world's submersibles 21 00:03:59,420 --> 00:04:00,420 combined. 22 00:04:00,580 --> 00:04:05,500 For the upcoming dive, she's being outfitted with high -resolution camera 23 00:04:05,500 --> 00:04:07,160 ,000 watts of illumination. 24 00:04:09,540 --> 00:04:14,740 Great care is taken in the preparation of each dive, for Alvin and her crew are 25 00:04:14,740 --> 00:04:16,519 bound for the harshest place on Earth. 26 00:04:33,390 --> 00:04:38,150 The search for the oldest living fossil actually began 30 years earlier on a 27 00:04:38,150 --> 00:04:41,950 series of dives in another ocean entirely, the Eastern Pacific. 28 00:04:56,750 --> 00:05:01,030 Scientists were investigating a curious temperature differential in the water 29 00:05:01,030 --> 00:05:02,030 column. 30 00:05:02,760 --> 00:05:07,000 What they found was clearly some kind of a volcanic process that was building 31 00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:08,000 elaborate structures. 32 00:06:07,950 --> 00:06:12,730 Water descending into fissures in the sea floor was apparently interacting 33 00:06:12,730 --> 00:06:17,390 the hot rocks beneath to re -emerge as a black cocktail of poison chemicals. 34 00:06:33,890 --> 00:06:38,420 While it was difficult for scientists... to understand the geological processes 35 00:06:38,420 --> 00:06:39,420 at work. 36 00:06:39,580 --> 00:06:43,640 The animals living on the chimneys were virtually impossible to comprehend. 37 00:07:06,800 --> 00:07:11,920 The sub's temperature probes indicated water hot enough to melt lead, and it 38 00:07:11,920 --> 00:07:13,960 heavily laden with hydrogen sulfide. 39 00:07:17,240 --> 00:07:19,460 There should have been nothing alive here at all. 40 00:07:34,120 --> 00:07:37,500 Among these amazing creatures was the worm Alvanella. 41 00:07:38,220 --> 00:07:43,520 Like tiny court jesters mocking science itself, they danced in and out of the 42 00:07:43,520 --> 00:07:46,780 poison water hot enough to boil a lobster bright red. 43 00:07:56,340 --> 00:08:00,340 As sunlight creatures, we didn't think to look in the dark for life. 44 00:08:01,450 --> 00:08:04,670 Nor did we think to look in water hot enough to boil us alive. 45 00:08:11,650 --> 00:08:16,790 The discovery of hydrothermal vents in the Pacific near Galapagos was the first 46 00:08:16,790 --> 00:08:21,630 step in a 30 -year quest to connect Sileker's ancient fossils on the cliffs 47 00:08:21,630 --> 00:08:26,230 Spain with the mysterious life forms on the mid -Atlantic seafloor. 48 00:08:31,440 --> 00:08:36,659 Human exploration of the deep sea is a slow, complex, and dangerous process. 49 00:08:37,640 --> 00:08:40,780 Finding the target miles below the ship will be difficult enough. 50 00:08:42,760 --> 00:08:45,920 Recovering a living specimen would be a triumph for the team. 51 00:08:58,940 --> 00:09:01,720 On board this dive is marine geologist Peter Rona. 52 00:09:02,620 --> 00:09:04,700 Chief pilot is Bruce Vickron. 53 00:09:05,600 --> 00:09:08,080 Observer is paleontologist Dolph Seiliger. 54 00:09:33,740 --> 00:09:37,980 It will take over two hours for Alvin to make the two and a half mile journey to 55 00:09:37,980 --> 00:09:38,980 the seafloor. 56 00:09:39,460 --> 00:09:43,680 Within the first thousand feet, all traces of sunlight will disappear. 57 00:10:13,640 --> 00:10:17,540 As the sub descends, there is always a chance scientists may glimpse a creature 58 00:10:17,540 --> 00:10:21,720 never before seen by human eyes, and perhaps never to be seen again. 59 00:10:24,760 --> 00:10:29,720 The soft -bodied creatures of the sea will hardly ever leave a trace behind. 60 00:10:30,140 --> 00:10:34,960 No fossil that a paleontologist could study millions of years later. 61 00:10:36,380 --> 00:10:41,000 Yet, these creatures were probably around hundreds of millions. 62 00:10:41,790 --> 00:10:43,690 or even a billion years ago. 63 00:10:44,390 --> 00:10:46,610 There is just no way for us to know. 64 00:10:47,790 --> 00:10:50,090 They are like phantoms of the sea. 65 00:11:40,980 --> 00:11:45,060 Traveling to the sea floor and back will use up five hours of Alvin's air supply 66 00:11:45,060 --> 00:11:50,640 and battery power, leaving scientists with only four hours to find their 67 00:11:50,640 --> 00:11:51,820 and recover their specimen. 68 00:11:52,960 --> 00:11:57,280 Depending on ocean currents, however, Alvin may have drifted well off course 69 00:11:57,280 --> 00:11:58,280 the long trip down. 70 00:12:13,900 --> 00:12:17,560 I was expecting only mud in every direction. 71 00:12:18,960 --> 00:12:23,460 We had landed on the most fantastic landscape I had ever seen. 72 00:12:29,620 --> 00:12:32,180 This was a very recent eruption. 73 00:12:33,660 --> 00:12:40,060 I could easily imagine the red hot lava boiling up from deep below. 74 00:12:41,390 --> 00:12:46,470 creating almost animal -like shapes the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. 75 00:12:47,510 --> 00:12:51,270 It felt like a journey to the center of the earth. 76 00:13:09,160 --> 00:13:12,860 Here in the deep Atlantic where the American and European plates rub 77 00:13:13,180 --> 00:13:18,280 Alvin can actually fly from the American plate to the European and not much 78 00:13:18,280 --> 00:13:19,640 longer than the blink of an eye. 79 00:14:22,060 --> 00:14:24,420 It is called simply the Mid -Ocean Ridge. 80 00:14:25,120 --> 00:14:31,980 10 ,000 feet high, 500 miles wide, and some 40 ,000 miles 81 00:14:31,980 --> 00:14:32,980 long. 82 00:14:33,320 --> 00:14:36,940 It is the largest geological feature on the face of the Earth. 83 00:14:43,100 --> 00:14:49,360 The outer shell of the Earth floats on a hot underlying layer, where the plates 84 00:14:49,360 --> 00:14:50,360 move apart. 85 00:14:50,640 --> 00:14:54,080 magma rises to form the mid -ocean ridge. 86 00:15:02,580 --> 00:15:05,840 This volcanic system is the oven of planet Earth. 87 00:15:06,280 --> 00:15:09,060 It bakes the Earth's crust on a daily basis. 88 00:15:09,420 --> 00:15:14,400 It boils seawater, serving up nutrients to creatures of the abyss, and 89 00:15:14,400 --> 00:15:16,600 occasionally it roasts them alive. 90 00:15:24,460 --> 00:15:29,980 In the eastern Pacific, off the coast of Mexico, the animals were helpless in 91 00:15:29,980 --> 00:15:34,460 the face of molten lava suddenly emerging from the surrounding crevices. 92 00:16:08,810 --> 00:16:14,510 Between one Alvin dive and the next, an extraordinary world simply disappeared. 93 00:16:16,170 --> 00:16:21,070 Replacing it were sculptures of pooled rock, left behind after most of the lava 94 00:16:21,070 --> 00:16:22,930 had flowed back down into the volcano. 95 00:16:52,490 --> 00:16:54,810 It was like the ruins of an ancient civilization. 96 00:16:57,750 --> 00:17:04,130 A grim memorial to an oasis of life burned away, perhaps never to return. 97 00:17:12,170 --> 00:17:17,970 But when Alvin descended after the eruption, scientists were puzzled by 98 00:17:17,970 --> 00:17:18,970 they saw. 99 00:17:24,750 --> 00:17:30,130 As they approached the volcano at nine degrees north, mysterious spaghetti 100 00:17:30,130 --> 00:17:34,090 covered the rocks, and there were large anemones growing thereby. 101 00:17:39,490 --> 00:17:40,530 Galatheid crabs. 102 00:17:46,030 --> 00:17:52,910 Numerous species of octopus, including something they named Dumbo. 103 00:17:53,740 --> 00:17:57,420 whose purpose at the edge of this poison oasis defied comprehension. 104 00:18:10,440 --> 00:18:16,320 There were Zoracid fish, giant tube worms, and golden mussels everywhere. 105 00:18:22,730 --> 00:18:27,930 There were billions of tiny white feather dusters, filtering nutrients 106 00:18:27,930 --> 00:18:29,850 hot water emerging from the rocks. 107 00:18:33,250 --> 00:18:36,750 Life had not just returned to the volcano at Nine North. 108 00:18:37,190 --> 00:18:42,890 In a few short years, it was back with a scale and vigor almost beyond belief. 109 00:18:54,320 --> 00:18:58,000 This was truly an extraordinary place like no other on Earth. 110 00:19:02,860 --> 00:19:06,640 It had seen a billion years of darkness, yet there was no night. 111 00:19:07,400 --> 00:19:12,840 It was a place without seasons, without rest, without time. 112 00:19:13,640 --> 00:19:16,520 A world driven by the rhythms of the inner Earth. 113 00:19:32,970 --> 00:19:37,590 At the center of this strange resurrection of life was a magnificent 114 00:19:37,590 --> 00:19:42,610 -high volcanic monolith decorated with six -foot -long tubeworms. 115 00:19:52,690 --> 00:19:57,210 The tubeworms clearly prospered amongst the hottest water as the pillar grew 116 00:19:57,210 --> 00:19:58,210 upwards. 117 00:20:01,260 --> 00:20:04,080 The most important clue lay at the bottom of the pillar. 118 00:20:04,820 --> 00:20:07,520 Here there were tubes, but no worms. 119 00:20:08,400 --> 00:20:13,760 Unable to move and left behind in the cold, these unfortunate creatures had 120 00:20:13,760 --> 00:20:15,020 apparently starved to death. 121 00:20:26,500 --> 00:20:32,120 With no mouth and no stomach, and planted permanently in the rock, the 122 00:20:32,120 --> 00:20:34,820 worms at first seemed more like plants than animals. 123 00:20:40,120 --> 00:20:44,600 Scientists, however, found specialized bacteria in the tube worms' tissues that 124 00:20:44,600 --> 00:20:47,700 were using chemical energy in the hot water to make nutrients. 125 00:20:51,020 --> 00:20:56,500 The bacteria were in effect turning poison into food and sharing it with 126 00:20:56,500 --> 00:20:57,500 host, the tube worms. 127 00:21:08,880 --> 00:21:13,420 The red filaments on the top of the worm draw hydrogen sulfide from the water to 128 00:21:13,420 --> 00:21:14,840 feed the bacteria inside. 129 00:21:18,200 --> 00:21:20,660 This miracle is called chemosynthesis. 130 00:21:24,200 --> 00:21:29,340 Scientists were astonished to discover the tube worm's red color comes from 131 00:21:29,340 --> 00:21:33,080 blood containing hemoglobin, very much like our own. 132 00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:37,360 So who are these fantastic creatures of the dark? 133 00:21:37,820 --> 00:21:40,640 who share with us the very blood that flows through our veins. 134 00:21:44,180 --> 00:21:51,020 Five billion years ago, a giant star, a hundred times greater than our own 135 00:21:51,020 --> 00:21:53,880 sun, blew itself into a supernova. 136 00:21:58,240 --> 00:22:03,000 Throughout the remaining cloud of gas and debris, there accumulated enough 137 00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:06,960 matter to reignite new stars, including our own sun. 138 00:22:32,360 --> 00:22:37,960 It is believed that the planet then formed, orbiting around the sun, growing 139 00:22:37,960 --> 00:22:41,240 larger and larger as they acquired debris from space. 140 00:22:43,900 --> 00:22:48,600 As the earth cooled and built a solid crust, the oceans were able to form. 141 00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:00,220 Life then flourished. 142 00:23:00,620 --> 00:23:05,540 Blanketing the Earth with green plants by harnessing energy from the Sun using 143 00:23:05,540 --> 00:23:06,540 photosynthesis. 144 00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:25,420 We once believed the Sun's radiation to be the only source of energy for all 145 00:23:25,420 --> 00:23:26,420 life on Earth. 146 00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:33,120 But deep beneath the Earth's crust, there remains an ancient furnace, fueled 147 00:23:33,120 --> 00:23:36,340 decaying radiation from that long -ago giant star. 148 00:23:42,420 --> 00:23:47,280 It is this energy that gives life to the extraordinary animals of the deep sea. 149 00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:54,380 An eruption of life driven by the embers of a dead star, still burning deep 150 00:23:54,380 --> 00:23:55,380 within the Earth. 151 00:24:16,270 --> 00:24:21,990 Over the years, as Alvin threw her beams of light across the abyss, the spirit 152 00:24:21,990 --> 00:24:25,230 of this volcanic force has begun to seem almost limitless. 153 00:24:26,350 --> 00:24:31,850 Just as scientists managed to unravel one mystery, another would loom out of 154 00:24:31,850 --> 00:24:32,850 darkness. 155 00:24:37,390 --> 00:24:39,430 They call it Lost City. 156 00:24:40,870 --> 00:24:45,610 Vast cathedrals are formed as water descends into the mantle of the earth. 157 00:24:46,250 --> 00:24:51,050 then heats up chemically and reappears, building enormous sculptures of 158 00:24:51,050 --> 00:24:52,050 limestone. 159 00:24:58,650 --> 00:25:05,210 The bacteria living here and the ecosystem around them are based on an 160 00:25:05,210 --> 00:25:09,410 methane chemistry unlike any of the events previously discovered. 161 00:25:12,010 --> 00:25:14,870 Without these new discoveries in the deep sea, 162 00:25:15,590 --> 00:25:19,690 Mysteries like those found on the cliffs in Spain would remain forever locked in 163 00:25:19,690 --> 00:25:20,690 stone. 164 00:25:35,110 --> 00:25:39,950 The fossils Dolph Seilacher found here are among the first evidence that life 165 00:25:39,950 --> 00:25:42,230 Earth would learn to build complex structures. 166 00:25:42,930 --> 00:25:43,930 But how? 167 00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:45,320 And why? 168 00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:50,860 Paleodiction is a living fossil. 169 00:25:51,320 --> 00:25:56,420 The oldest were simple meanders made by animals tunneling in the mud. 170 00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:05,180 But over hundreds of millions of years, the tunnels became more and more 171 00:26:05,180 --> 00:26:10,860 elaborate until these creatures learned to build a perfect hexagonal pattern. 172 00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:25,280 This creature at its tunnels survived mass extinctions that killed almost all 173 00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:26,740 other life on Earth. 174 00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:30,580 So what was its wonderful secret? 175 00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:05,880 Once scientists knew where to look, they began to find an almost limitless 176 00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:09,640 variety of hydrothermal structures growing along the mid -Atlantic ridge. 177 00:27:10,380 --> 00:27:15,440 They make possible a fantastic wilderness of life as rich as anywhere 178 00:27:21,960 --> 00:27:27,840 It was very difficult to imagine that these structures were not created for 179 00:27:27,840 --> 00:27:28,840 animals inside. 180 00:27:30,190 --> 00:27:36,330 The bowls are so perfect to serve up the soup of bacteria for the shrimp to eat. 181 00:27:44,470 --> 00:27:48,070 Everywhere we went, the geology was as if alive. 182 00:27:49,730 --> 00:27:56,710 Massive structures growing not in millions of years, but almost before our 183 00:28:04,330 --> 00:28:08,570 For years, almost every dive would produce more questions than answers. 184 00:28:09,030 --> 00:28:12,230 Around almost every corner, another puzzle. 185 00:28:12,850 --> 00:28:18,090 But after decades of exploration and study, some mysteries began to unfold. 186 00:28:22,090 --> 00:28:26,590 At the center of the relationship between the animals and the flow of 187 00:28:26,590 --> 00:28:32,930 from the chimneys are hundreds of species of specialized bacteria growing 188 00:28:32,930 --> 00:28:33,930 rocks. 189 00:28:46,670 --> 00:28:50,950 The bacteria use chemical energy from the hot water to produce nutrients 190 00:28:50,950 --> 00:28:53,010 necessary to sustain their metabolism. 191 00:29:01,770 --> 00:29:05,510 The shrimp grazing on the rocks use the bacteria as food. 192 00:29:11,920 --> 00:29:16,200 For the shrimp, there is a fine line between a good solid meal and getting 193 00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:17,200 burned alive. 194 00:29:19,060 --> 00:29:23,900 The white shrimp at the top of this mound has burned off most of its 195 00:29:23,900 --> 00:29:25,660 while grazing among the hot rocks. 196 00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:52,500 What began as a curiosity in the Pacific has become a vast worldwide phenomenon. 197 00:29:55,400 --> 00:29:59,520 Dozens of new sites have been explored throughout the mid -ocean ridge system. 198 00:30:01,740 --> 00:30:05,700 Scientists were not expecting much of interest on the mid -Atlantic ridge. 199 00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:11,160 What they found was the most fantastic event of them all. 200 00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:21,960 the size and shape of a football stadium. 201 00:30:22,260 --> 00:30:25,020 They dubbed it the Houston Astrodome. 202 00:32:17,610 --> 00:32:21,830 Chemosynthetic bacteria, it turns out, were not just growing on the rocks, but 203 00:32:21,830 --> 00:32:22,870 on the shrimps themselves. 204 00:32:27,020 --> 00:32:31,040 coated in a slimy layer of bacteria, which they scrape off and eat. 205 00:32:33,700 --> 00:32:39,340 The shrimp seem to fight for position in the hot water in order to feed their 206 00:32:39,340 --> 00:32:40,340 coat of bacteria. 207 00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:45,180 When scientists began to look beyond the obvious feeding patterns of the animals 208 00:32:45,180 --> 00:32:49,980 and probe deeper into the chimney walls themselves, 209 00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:56,220 they made perhaps the most astonishing discovery. 210 00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:06,500 In total darkness, bathed in the poison breath of the inner earth, at 3 211 00:33:06,500 --> 00:33:12,640 ,500 pounds of pressure per square inch and temperatures exceeding 230 degrees 212 00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:17,320 Fahrenheit, lives the microscopic hyperthermophile. 213 00:33:19,220 --> 00:33:22,080 We did not even think to look here for life. 214 00:33:27,690 --> 00:33:30,330 There is no harsher environment on Earth. 215 00:33:31,810 --> 00:33:34,730 There is no creature more alien to us. 216 00:33:48,510 --> 00:33:52,770 Yet as we journey down deeper among the molecules of its DNA, 217 00:33:53,770 --> 00:34:00,210 We reached the four base chemicals of life's universal alphabet This is the 218 00:34:00,210 --> 00:34:06,010 language of human DNA and in this we are most certainly related 219 00:34:06,010 --> 00:34:12,949 There is a 220 00:34:12,949 --> 00:34:18,750 good chance that this is where life began on earth and Here among the embers 221 00:34:18,750 --> 00:34:24,860 that long ago dead star is where we began our journey 5 billion years ago. 222 00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:45,780 With the discovery of microbes living in the vents, perhaps miles below the sea 223 00:34:45,780 --> 00:34:51,199 floor, scientists began to consider that most of the biomass on Earth might well 224 00:34:51,199 --> 00:34:52,199 live here. 225 00:34:52,489 --> 00:34:54,790 beneath the volcanoes of the deep sea. 226 00:35:51,820 --> 00:35:55,040 No one knows how or why a vent shuts off. 227 00:35:55,980 --> 00:36:01,840 But here, where billions of creatures once thrived, all that remains are great 228 00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:02,840 mounds of minerals. 229 00:36:05,360 --> 00:36:10,320 Iron, zinc, silver, and gold, once spewed from the furnaces beneath. 230 00:36:14,240 --> 00:36:17,740 There is little in this metallic desert to sustain life. 231 00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:28,860 To survive here would require an entirely different strategy than a tube 232 00:36:28,860 --> 00:36:30,960 clam, or a shrimp could muster. 233 00:36:37,720 --> 00:36:42,040 While most scientists barely notice this place on their way to the hot spots 234 00:36:42,040 --> 00:36:43,040 nearby, 235 00:36:43,580 --> 00:36:49,560 Seilacher and Rona will search here, among the remnants of a dead volcano, 236 00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:51,880 their mysterious crop circles of the deep. 237 00:36:52,350 --> 00:36:54,710 and a creature that thrives where others cannot. 238 00:36:58,150 --> 00:37:02,930 We looked in the area Peter calls the Valley of Paleodixia. 239 00:37:08,070 --> 00:37:14,110 I was surprised that we should be looking where there was no obvious life, 240 00:37:14,110 --> 00:37:16,530 that is perhaps the animal's secret. 241 00:37:36,710 --> 00:37:39,510 I certainly had not expected to find so many. 242 00:37:40,270 --> 00:37:43,890 They were all over the place by the thousands. 243 00:37:45,470 --> 00:37:52,210 As soon as I got there and looked at the hexagon shape and the arrangement of 244 00:37:52,210 --> 00:37:58,270 the holes, I knew this was my Paleodiction nodosum. 245 00:38:02,270 --> 00:38:05,130 The creature is probably farming bacteria. 246 00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:08,380 like the shrimp and the tube worms. 247 00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:15,260 But unlike them, it must be very efficient because the nutrients are so 248 00:38:21,740 --> 00:38:26,640 We had very little time left, so the sub -pilot went to work right away. 249 00:38:27,240 --> 00:38:32,440 After all the trouble of finding them, collecting some samples would be fairly 250 00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:33,440 easy. 251 00:38:41,230 --> 00:38:42,650 A little bit more to the right. 252 00:38:43,210 --> 00:38:44,210 Okay, start. 253 00:38:44,410 --> 00:38:47,210 You're coming down. You look like you're right over it. 254 00:38:47,570 --> 00:38:49,010 Come on down slowly. 255 00:38:49,370 --> 00:38:50,450 Can you see it clearly? 256 00:38:54,870 --> 00:38:55,870 Down, down there. 257 00:38:59,410 --> 00:39:06,210 At last, 258 00:39:06,210 --> 00:39:11,800 after eight hours in the sub and 50 years on the cliffs of Spain, We finally 259 00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:12,800 the palaeodynsia. 260 00:39:14,620 --> 00:39:16,180 It was a great moment. 261 00:39:40,710 --> 00:39:44,670 We fully expected the creature to come swimming out at any moment. 262 00:39:46,010 --> 00:39:47,390 But she did not. 263 00:39:49,710 --> 00:39:51,890 Then we went in after it. 264 00:39:59,210 --> 00:40:02,710 It was important for me that the tunnels would be there. 265 00:40:04,970 --> 00:40:06,950 And the tunnels were there. 266 00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:15,500 but not a creature in any of them. 267 00:40:19,180 --> 00:40:20,180 Nothing. 268 00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:26,760 There have been a dozen dives to the valley of the Paleodicteon over ten 269 00:40:27,700 --> 00:40:32,840 They have not yet found the animal itself, but they have discovered its 270 00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:39,420 They believe the creature is farming bacteria in its tunnels, and this 271 00:40:39,420 --> 00:40:42,180 it to live frugally on the sparse chemical remnants. 272 00:40:42,650 --> 00:40:43,650 of the dead volcano. 273 00:40:45,750 --> 00:40:52,190 Because their tunnels match those on the cliffs of Spain, it suggests they have 274 00:40:52,190 --> 00:40:55,370 outlived almost all other forms of life on Earth. 275 00:40:57,310 --> 00:41:03,650 The important thing is that it is still alive and digging its wonderful burrows, 276 00:41:03,810 --> 00:41:09,010 the same as the fossils I found 50 years ago on my honeymoon. 277 00:41:11,050 --> 00:41:18,030 But she is very shy, and we have not seen her, and I probably never will. 278 00:41:18,890 --> 00:41:23,850 But that is better, I think, because I can still imagine anything I want. 279 00:41:24,910 --> 00:41:31,470 And my wife Edith would have been happy that I never found my mistress of the 280 00:41:31,470 --> 00:41:32,470 deep. 281 00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:50,500 As long as we have had eyes to see, we have gazed into the night sky and tried 282 00:41:50,500 --> 00:41:54,060 to imagine what might be bathed in the light of distant stars. 283 00:41:55,500 --> 00:42:02,100 We know now that the spirit of life also thrives in the darkness, among the 284 00:42:02,100 --> 00:42:07,340 embers of the dead stars, and we must try to imagine that as well.