Undiscovered life in Antarctica's ice caves?

Mount Erebus (pictured right) is a volcano located in Antarctica, and is the southernmost active volcano on Earth. According to this story from the Smithsonian Magazine, the volcano constantly sputters hot gas and lava which sculpt cool ice caves and create towers of ice that resemble chimneys.

The sides of Erebus are spiked with hundreds of these ice towers, called fumaroles. Gas and heat seeping through the side of the volcano melt the snowpack above, carving out a cave. Steam escaping from the cave freezes as soon as it hits the air, building chimneys as high as 60 feet! Below are examples of these neat ice chimneys and caves:





Erebus and the rest of Antarctica will be studied closely in 2007, as scientists head there for the fourth International Polar Year since 1882. They'll try out new monitoring techniques, study how Antarctica and the Arctic influence worldwide weather, and examine what kind of life could exist in the extreme cold and winter-long dark of the poles.

The ice caves at Mount Erebus are among the most promising places for undiscovered life in Antarctica. Though they grow or shrink depending on how much heat the volcano emits, inside they maintain a temperature of about 32 degrees (very warm for Antarctica!).