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LiveScience
LiveScience
Sascha Pare

Lost world of lagoons filled with mounds of microbes discovered in Atacama desert

Green mounds of stromatolites flourish at the bottom of a lagoon in Argentina's Puna de Atacama. (Image credit: Brian Hynek)

A patchwork of crystal-clear lagoons and vast salt plains in Argentina's Puna de Atacama desert forms an otherworldly ecosystem unlike "anything any scientist has ever seen," researchers say.

The never-before-seen lagoons host mounds of rock layered with microbes that, at first glance, resemble some of the first known forms of life on Earth. Researchers discovered this lost world by chance after spotting a network of strange pools on satellite images of the desert in northwestern Argentina.

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