Scientists Intrigued by Strange Tunnels Under Africa and the Middle East

In the deserts of Africa and the Middle East, scientists have discovered tiny tubes that appear to have been made by something alive. In a press release, researchers from Germany's Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz described their surprise upon finding these bizarre tubular tunnels in marble and limestone. "We were surprised," explained Cees Passchier, who first found the tunnels in Namibia 15 years ago, "because these tubes are clearly not the result of a geological process." In a new paper published in the Geomicrobiology Journal, Passchier and his colleagues described the bizarre physical properties of the weird tubes they found, first in Namibia and then in Saudi Arabia and Oman, both located thousands of miles to the east. These micro-burrows, as they're called, are generally about an inch long and about half a millimeter wide. Cutting down into rocks that scientists like Passchier have long studied, clusters of these tiny tunnels have been exposed by erosion. When analyzed, ... Read full article.