But the region is also home to some of the world's only permanently ice-covered lakes, including Bonney. Coated with a permanent ice cover, Bonney Lake is set in the bizarre landscape of Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys. For many decades after Scott's expedition, no one offered evidence of life to challenge his eerie description of McMurdo. But since 1990, pioneering Antarctic scientists have begun to find microbial life in McMurdo's soils, lakes, and ephemeral summer streams. John Priscu's team has been at the forefront of research looking for life inside the icy coating of the region's permanently ice-covered lakes.
Ice can contain pockets of liquid water, which is a prerequisite for life.
That means the interior of the ice is probably a wetter, warmer, and friendlier environment for life than the cold, dry surface of the McMurdo desert. Searching for Life in Dirt A scanning electron micrograph of microbes found in McMurdo Dry Valley lake ice. For Priscu, a critical clue to the existence of life in the ice covers of McMurdo's lakes was the presence of sediment on their surfaces, deposited by fierce winds. Observing a dirty film of sediment on the lakes during the dark winter months but not in the light months, Priscu recognized that the dirt must seep into the ice as the sun melts the surface. If microbes existed in the sinking sediments, they could potentially survive deep in the ice layer.