(Goeze, 1778)

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Johann August Ephraim Goeze was a German zoologist from Aschersleben who lived in the 18th century.

He did much work with aquatic invertebrates, particularly insects and worms. In 1773, he was the first to describe tardigrades, also known as "water bears", some individual species can survive extreme conditions such as: near by supernovae, gamma-ray bursts or large scale meteorite impact, or said in other words: global mass extinction events.

Some tardigrade species can survive temperatures close to absolute zero and for a short period temperatures about 150° Celcius. They can survive periodes without food or water for more than 30 years, they can take high dosis of ionizing radiation, at a level which would be hundreds of times that of a lethal dose to humans. They can survive the vacuum of space and at the same time withstand pressures which are 6 times higher than those found in the deepest ocean.

Read more about Goeze in Wikipedia.