Life on Earth originated at deep-sea vents, and first took the form of chemosynthetic microbes. (Fittingly, one of the sites at the Galapagos Rift is called the Garden of Eden.) These ancestral microbes eventually evolved into endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful, spreading out of the depths and into the shallows. Some gave rise to more complex forms of life, like animals. And some of these, by partnering with chemosynthetic bacteria, managed to descend back into the abyss, to a world that would otherwise be too low in nutrients to support them. All the animals that live at
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