For those of you who haven’t heard of Lake Vostok, it has been called “the most alien lake on Earth”. There was some fascinating news was released this afternoon.

Lake Vostok is a subglacial lake the size of Lake Ontario located 2.5 miles below sea level in the middle of Antarctica. It is estimated that the lake water lying beneath the ice has not been accessed in over 20 millions years! To put that in perspective, the largest mammal ever to walk the Earth, the ‘giraffe-rhino’ called a Paraceratherium was just going extinct at this time!