LiveScience Image Gallery

Alien Life of the Antarctic

Credit: Angelika Brandt

Polar Vessel

Three sampling expeditions aboard the German research vessel "Polarsterni" revealed hundreds of new animal species in the depths of the Southern Ocean.
Credit: Wiebke Brokeland

Little Pincher

This image shows an isopod (Munna species) discovered in the Weddell Sea.
Credit: Wiebke Brokeland

Pink Worm

This pink polychaete worm was discovered in the Weddell Sea.
Credit: Susanne Lockhart

Sea Urchin Inn

This spindly, cidaroid sea urchin has house guests: sponges, made up of millions of single-celled animals, have attached to the urchini's branches.
Credit: Wiebke Brokeland

Slim Isopod

This serolid isopod can flatten its body to increase surface area and keep from sinking into the fine-grain sediment on the seafloor.
Credit: Wiebke Brokeland

Red-Eyed Critter

Some of the deep-water antarcturid isopods (like the one shown) have eyes, suggesting they evolved from species that lived on the shallower continental shelf, where light penetrated to the bottom.
Credit: Wiebke Brokeland

Ghostly Swimmer

This crustacean (Ischnomesus species) was discovered in the Weddell Sea.
Credit: Wiebke Brokeland

Sea Spider

This Munnopsis species found in the western Weddell Sea is a type of isopod, a group of marine invertebrates (animals without backbones). The "deep-sea spider" dines on bits of food that sink to the sea floor.
Credit: Wiebke Brokeland

Sediment Feeder

This protobranch bivalve, or animal with a shell that has two hinged valves, gathers bits of food by probing the soft sediment with a thin appendage.
Credit: Wiebke Brokeland

Half Shell

This protobranch bivalve, discovered in the Weddell Sea, gathers bits of food by probing the soft sediment with a thin appendage.
Credit: Wiebke Brokeland

Roly-Poly

Scientists discovered more than 200 polychaete worm species, 81 of which were previously unknown. This Ophryotrocha species, like other segmented worms, has long bristle-like appendages and it feeds on sinking organic debris called "marine snow."