The majority of the Roman city lies buried beneath deep sediments from the Orontes River, or has been obscured by recent construction.
This means, the investigators say, that the bacterial mechanism could have worked even in very deep sediments where no oxygen is available to bacteria.
Includes habitats in deeper sediments.
Below these deposits lies a layer of deep sediment, a relic of the era when the Pacific Ocean covered the area.
Its burrowing fulfils an important rôle in the mangrove ecosystem bringing organic matter up from deep sediments.
The Pleistocene glaciations scoured the landscape clean and covered much of it in deep quaternary sediments.
The insight that flysch is actually a deep marine sediment typical for a particular plate tectonic setting came only much later.
"But deep sediment in the middle, near the water."
There is clear evidence for the presence of as much as 45 percent by weight of ash in some deep marine sediments.
The 1976 to 1979 campaigns primarily involved the stern which had been well preserved under 2 to 3 metre deep sediment.