eidolon @shaderphantom@awoo.space

shhh
don't disturb vulpine club

they're SLEEPING

In 1910, under the highlands of central Mexico in the Naica Mine of Mexico, a precious metals mining company discovered what would be known as the Cave of Swords. At a depth of 120 meters, the cave was a fascination to tourists, who damaged the cave. 90 years later, the same mining company began to pump the water out of another cave they had discovered, on the other side of the mountain, at a depth of 300 meters...

What they discovered in that cave was this. Giant Crystal Cave, or the Cave of the Crystals. Some of the largest crystals ever discovered, bigger than trees, beneath the Chihuahua desert they had been growing in the perfect environment for 500,000 years.

In 1986 some geothermal teams in communist Romania drilled their way into a subterranean world, a world which had been cut off from the rest of the biosphere for 5.5 million years. No food, water, sunlight, or even radioactive particles from the Chernobyl disaster had made it there, these biologist and cavers were the first. It was warm and full of toxic gases, and it had a lake that was absolutely teeming with creatures. This is Movile Cave in Romania.

The cave was filled with 33 unique and endemic species of troglobites, among them were spiders, centipedes, leeches, and many, many isopods. They fed on a thin gooey film of chemosynthetic bacteria on the water and walls, the first known example of a terrestrial chemosynthetic ecosystem.