(Image source: Columbia University / NASA ) BY STEVEN SPARKMAN The Russian team who drilled into Antarctica’s isolated Lake Vostok say they’ve found life in the icy waters — life they say is drastically different from anything they’ve seen before. Lake Vostok has spent at least the last 15 million years cut off from the rest of life on earth, trapped under a giant ice sheet. (Via RT ) Russian scientists spent 20 years drilling through the more than two miles of ice covering the lake, all to discover what life was like under the water, where organisms had to live in total darkness. (Via CBC ) Just over a year after the scientists broke through, they say they’ve found something. Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency quotes one researcher saying: “After excluding all known contaminants … we discovered bacterial DNA that does not match any known species listed in global databanks. We call it unidentified and ‘unclassified’ life.” They said the bacteria was about 86 percent similar to other life forms, which, considering all life on earth is related, is actually a pretty huge difference. The scientists couldn’t even trace its evolutionary lineage. A writer for Scientific American gushed over the findings, saying: “Decades of hard work to reach one of the most alien places on Earth may actually be revealing lifeforms we have not knowingly encountered before. It doesn’t really get better than this!” The findings still have to be peer reviewed, but if confirmed, the research will help scientists understand life under the ice — and possibly in other extreme environments, like Jupiter’s icy moons. (Via NBC / OurAmazingPlanet ) Lake Vostok was the site of the lowest air temperature record ever made on Earth — 128 degrees below zero — and that was above the ice.