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POPSExtreme Species Living Without Oxygen Hint at Possible ET Lifeforms The creature, shown above, has specialized organelles so that it can survive without oxygen and gives a hint at possible types of lifeforms awaiting discovery in off-planet habitats such as Jupiter's Europa. A wide variety of single-celled organisms that live anaerobically, without oxygen, have been discovered in the past, usually deep underwater or deep underground. But researchers had not found a multi-cellular or metazoan animal that did so until now — the giant tube worms that live by hydrothermal vents, for instance, rely on dissolved oxygen. These new animals could shed light on what life might have looked like before the rise of oxygen levels in the deep ocean and the appearance of the first large animals in the fossil record roughly 550 million to 600 million years ago, the scientists noted.
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