Comment #184328 by Count von Count

...the combined undersea biomass could be equivalent to that of all the plants on Earth. ...some of the cells are as old as the sediment.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
-H.P. Lovecraft

Could it be the old one? Cthulhu fhtagn.

More likely to be the deeply buried extremities of that foul Great Old One Ubbo-Sathla...

From Wikipedia entry on Clark Ashton Smith

Ubbo-Sathla
There, in the grey beginning of Earth, the formless mass that was Ubbo-Sathla reposed amid the slime and the vapors. Headless, without organs or members, it sloughed from its oozy sides, in a slow, ceaseless wave, the amoebic forms that were the archetypes of earthly life. Horrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror; and loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing. About it, prone or tilted in the mire, there lay the mighty tablets of star-quarried stone that were writ with the inconceivable wisdom of the pre-mundane gods.
�quot;Clark Ashton Smith, "Ubbo-Sathla"

Ubbo-Sathla (The Unbegotten Source, The Demiurge) is described as a huge protoplasmic mass resting in a grotto deep beneath the frozen earth. The being is of a monstrous fecundity, spontaneously generating primordial single-celled organisms that pour unceasingly from its shapeless form. It guards a set of stone tablets believed to contain the knowledge of the Elder Gods.

Ubbo-Sathla is said to have spawned the prototypes of all forms of life on Earth; though whatever its pseudopods touch is forever devoid of life. Ubbo-Sathla is destined to someday reabsorb all living things on Earth.

Ubbo-Sathla possibly dwells in gray-litten Y'qaa. The being may also dwell in Mount Voormithadreth and may have spawned another of its residents, the being Abhoth, whose form and nature is very similar. The tablets that Ubbo-Sathla guards have been oft sought by sorcerers, though no sorcerer has yet succeeded in acquiring them.

Greg :)

PS Fascinating science story by the way!