For the first time, huge "ameobas" have been spotted in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world’s oceans.
The giants of the deep are so-called xenophyophores, sponge-like animals that—like amoebas—are made of just one cell. They were found during a July research expedition run by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
The animals are about four inches (ten centimeters) long—among the largest single-celled organisms known to exist.
The creatures were discovered at depths of 6.6 miles (10.6 kilometers). That breaks a previous record for xenophyophores found in the New Hebrides Trench at 4.7 miles (7.6 kilometers).
Xenophyophores represent "one of the few groups of organisms found exclusively in the deep sea," said Lisa Levin, a Scripps oceanographer who studied the expedition’s data.