Scientists Found a Deep-Sea ‘Death Pool’ That Vanished. It May Show How Earth’s First Life Survived

Marine ecologists used to call them “black pools of death.” Only as far back as a decade ago, teal-colored, deep-sea brine pools had been assumed to be oxygen-sapping dead zones, despite the wealth of deeply weird and alien-like “extremophiles” that biologists have found living along their margins.

But something was alive within these phenomenally salty undersea lakes—and now researchers have found evidence of a once-active brine pool whose remains may explain how some of Earth’s earliest primordial life survived in…