Word: beggiatoa
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Dates: during 1995-1995
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...Disbelief was quickly replaced by intense curiosity. What were these animals feeding on in the absence of any detectable food supply? How were they surviving without light? The answer, surprisingly, had been found by a Russian scientist more than 100 years earlier. He had shown that an underwater bacterium, Beggiatoa, lived on hydrogen sulfide, a substance that is highly toxic to most forms of life. The bacterium was chemosynthetic--as opposed to photosynthetic--getting its energy from chemicals rather than from...
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