Pictures … discovering strange creatures in two Arab countries!

Research in the desert areas in Oman, Saudi Arabia and Namibia revealed unusual structures that are likely to be caused by the activity of a microbial life that is still unknown.

An international team of researchers, led by Cis Basheer from the University of Mainz in Germany, discovered small, unfamiliar burrows, in the form of accurate tubes that extend through the rocks in a parallel order from top to bottom, in marble and limestone in these desert areas, according to a study published in the magazine “Gyrievi -Journal”.

The width of these tubes was almost half a millimeter, and a length of up to 3 centimeters, and they were parallel from top to bottom, and extending over distances of up to 10 meters.

According to the study, these tunnels were filled with a soft powder of pure calcium carbonate, which indicates a vital process caused by microbes that lived in this microscopic burrow.

It is not yet known whether these organisms are still alive, or they have become extinct long ago, as the age of these microbims dates back to a million or two million years, and the tests indicate that they were formed in a more moisture climate, as some rocks that contain these tunnels were formed 500 to 600 million years ago during the period of continents.

These organisms are classified as what is known as rocky cavity, which are microorganisms that live inside the rocks and not only on their surface, and they are one of the admirers of life on the planet.

Scientists have noticed the presence of these creatures with hot and dry deserts such as the Atacama desert in Chile, or polar environments such as Antarctica or the depths of the earth under the layers of soil and rocks, in mountains and caves, and in carbonate and granite rocks and even in dead coral reefs.

These organisms absorb very few moisture from the air or dew, and perform optical construction if they are in transparent layers that allow light to pass, or feed on minerals using chemical reactions that resemble organisms on the ocean floor and protect themselves from strong solar radiation and dryness using rock as a shield. (Al -Jazeera)