Like a plague of mice in a cheese cellar, this nano army raided the continent’s greatest petroleum reserve and left behind only wrappers and rinds. These unlikely predators, representing several different genera, are otherworldly creatures that nourish themselves on hydrocarbons, survive without oxygen, and off-gas methane (one of the only characteristics we share besides an appetite for crude oil). Small as they are, they appear to be the masters of a poorly understood domain known to geochemists as the “deep biosphere.”
