Life thrives in the deepest, darkest recesses of Earth’s crust—from methane seeps in the ocean floor to the highest reaches of Arctic permafrost—and it is unlike anything seen on the surface. Intraterrestrials shares what scientists are learning about these strange types of microbial life—and how research expeditions to some of the most extreme locales on the planet are broadening our understanding of what life is and how its earliest forms may have evolved.
Drawing on her experiences and those of her fellow scientists working in challenging and often dangerous conditions, Karen Lloyd takes readers on an adventure from the bottom of the ocean in submersibles through the jungles of Central America to the high-altitude volcanoes of the Andes. Only discovered in recent decades, “intraterrestrials”—subsurface beings that are truly alien—are demonstrating how life can exist in boiling water, pure acid, and bleach. They enable us to peer back to the very dawn of life on Earth, disclosing deep branches on the tree of life that push the limits of what we thought possible. Some can “breathe” rocks or even electrons. Others may live for hundreds of thousands of years or longer. All of them are living in ways that are totally foreign to us surface dwellers.
Blending captivating storytelling with the latest science, Intraterrestrials reveals what microbes in Earth’s deep surface biosphere can tell us about the prospects for finding life on other planets—and the future of life on our own.
Karen G. Lloyd is the Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies and Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in leading publications such as Nature and Science.
“In Intraterrestrials, Karen Lloyd takes readers on the exciting quest to understand biodiversity’s last frontier: microbial life within the earth. Part Indiana Jones, part Louis Pasteur, Lloyd engagingly explains the challenging fieldwork and sophisticated lab research that together are revealing the subterranean biota and showing why it matters.”—Andrew H. Knoll, author of A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters
“As we search for life elsewhere in the universe, there is much still to learn about the life beneath our feet. In a narrative that combines the principles of thermodynamics with breathtaking, all-action adventure, Lloyd ventures from the high Arctic to deep-sea hydrothermal vents in pursuit of the limits of life. This is one of the most exciting books I have read in ages.”—Henry Gee, author of A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth
“Karen Lloyd’s innovative research will change the way that readers think about life on Earth. She tells extraordinary stories about hidden ‘intraterrestrials’ that live in the rocks beneath our feet and transports us from volcanic jets to deep ocean vents to Arctic permafrost. I have long defined my own research on the unexplored rainforest canopy as the eighth continent, but Lloyd’s world ranks far beyond that, perhaps as a tenth planet. I loved reading every page!”—Meg Lowman, author of The Arbornaut
“Forget Ewoks, tribbles, and Daleks. Fictional extraterrestrials seem quite ordinary compared with the truly bizarre organisms living beneath our feet: microbes that thrive in physical and chemical extremes, ‘breathe’ rocks—and outlive humans. Karen Lloyd’s Intraterrestrials will forever change your understanding of what it means to be alive on Earth.”—Marcia Bjornerud, author of Timefulness and Turning to Stone
“Intraterrestrials is an astonishing, exhilarating, mind-bending journey into the hidden living world deep beneath our planet’s sunlit surface. Lloyd is a master storyteller and unrivaled expert in sharing the thrills and challenges of diving to the ocean floor, sampling near active volcanoes, and dodging polar bears on rapidly thawing permafrost. Read this book and prepare to enter a living realm beyond your wildest imagination.”—Robert M. Hazen, author of The Story of Earth
