The McMurdo Dry Valleys are one of the most extreme and otherworldly landscapes on Earth – a vast, ice-free expanse carved into the edge of Antarctica.
Shielded from snowfall by surrounding mountains and scoured by fierce katabatic winds, the valleys are so dry and cold that they’ve been compared to the surface of Mars.
When a research team visited the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica’s Victoria Land, they collected soil samples to see what was living there – even in the most extreme locations on Earth, there’s usually something.
But there was nothing. “We couldn’t even detect DNA in these samples,” said Professor Byron Adams. “No life there, period. At least not in the last 20-30,000 years or so.”
The strange thing about these dry valleys is that, unlike most of the rest of Antarctica, they aren’t covered in snow – it’s bare ground. The lakes, which are covered in a layer of ice 3-5m thick throughout the year, are home to microbial mats of cyanobacteria.
