Researchers recently discovered two species of algae in the deep sea at depths of more than 200 meters, which may represent ancient algae that were not previously recognized.

Research related to the discovery was published in the latest "Journal of Phycology".

Chlorella may be the earliest green plant. As early as 1 billion years ago, Chlorella had already differentiated from the large family of plants. Professor F Zechman of the University of California has been engaged in algae research.

He told the media: "These algae live in seawater at a depth of 210 meters. For photosynthetic organisms, this depth is really unimaginable.

Of course, in shallow seas, you can also find their figures, but they are often limited to dark corners under the cover of rocks and other objects."

"These algae may have some special chlorophyll, and thus be able to live in the deep sea under extremely low-intensity blue light." The two new discoveries that were made after the algae were named Palmophyllum and Verdigellas. Professor F Zechman and others also conducted genetic research on these algae, and the conclusions they got were quite shocking.

Green plants can be roughly divided into two categories: one, all terrestrial plants and green algae with complex structures, charophyta, etc.; the second category is all other Chlorophyta plants.

Most paleontological or modern biological research attempts to find the ancestors of the first type of plants, namely, land plants and charophytes. However, there are very few related studies on the origin of the second type of plants.

The DNA characteristics of these algae show that they do not belong to the Chlorophyta taxonomically, but should be attributed to a unique and very old new group of green plants.

Any existing higher taxa cannot contain this algal plant, and a new order, or even a higher taxon, should be established for them. The comparison of gene sequences also found that these green algal plants belonged to the earliest divergent green plants, in other words, they may have appeared 1 billion years ago.

The discovery of these two types of green algae has significantly changed the academic community's understanding of green plants. Although there is no fossil evidence, these previously unrecognized deep-sea algae are truly "living fossils."

These algae live in the deep sea with weak light, and their tenacious vitality may be the key to their super longevity! After all, in this deep-sea environment, the dangers of waves, water temperature, and animal predation to plants are very small.