The model's results, published in the May 25 edition of Nature, the prestigious British scientific journal, agree with rock data and explain how life could have survived such extensive ice sheet coverage of the earth. Temperatures in the equatorial pool would have ranged from 40 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, with light penetrating the surface to permit the photosynthesis necessary to support life.
Photosynthesis is the chemical process by which plants convert sunlight to food.
But I don't see how it could have survived 5 million years in the ocean without photosynthesis, enduring temperatures above the ice ranging from minus 30 to minus 110 degrees Centigrade. That period predates by millions of years the partial glaciation which coincided with early man and woolly mammoths. Ice reflects sunlight and doesn't want to melt. Once you put all that ice on the earth, it's very hard to get it off. Hyde said controversy remains as to the life forms that would have inhabited the equatorial pools.