The amazing “Jurassic Coast” in Dorset/Devon has thrown up another fantastic fossil – the skull of a massive pliosaur, which would have been perhaps 15m long. To be honest, the fossil isn’t much to look at (a load of rock), but it’s a pretty impressive find. Pliosaurs, in case you don’t know, were short-necked marine [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Oceans’
05/05/2009
SAHARA, THE CONFUSED SEAL
November 2007 Dealing with wild animals is difficult. This video tells the amusing/sad story of an arctic seal, which was found – very lost – off the coast of Africa, was brought to the UK, fed, then eventually released from the north coast of Scotland, pointed in the right direction. What happened next?
23/04/2009
SAVE THE PARROTFISH TO SAVE THE REEFS
November 2007 Parrotfish are major grazers of the algae that grow on coral reefs. Protecting them from over-fishing may be decisive for the survival of reefs in the Caribbean. Sea urchins can also do the trick. That’s the take-home message of a Nature article, most of which consists are rather hard to follow mathematical modelling – ecology is not all [...]
23/04/2009
WHY ARE THERE NO MARINE INSECTS?
October 2007 There are no insects that spend their whole life cycle under the surface of the sea, and very few that spend even part of their life on or in the sea. Why not? This student-built website takes you through the various hypotheses (salinity, competitive exclusion etc) and provides you with lots of thought-provoking ideas. NB You can’t [...]
22/04/2009
EAT YOUR HEART OUT DOCTOR WHO
October 2007 Go back in time 510 Myr, shortly before a mudslide trapped and preserved an amazing array of soft-bodied fauna in a shallow sea in what is now called the Burgess Shale. This video – an extract from a 5-minute long show from the Field Museum in Chicago – shows some of the key bizarre organisms (including Wiwixia, [...]
21/04/2009
WHERE DID THAT BABY SHARK COME FROM?
May 2007 A female bonnethead shark (part of the hammerhead family) gave birth to a pup (yes, some sharks are viviparous – this was very important for realising that mammals have eggs. Read my book!). What was interesting is that she had not been in contact with a male – it was a case of parthenogenesis, unusual in such [...]
21/04/2009
WEIRD TURTLE SPOTTED IN CAMBODIA
May 2007 A rare soft-shelled turtle – one of the largest turtles in the world – has been observed in Cambodia. I’ve never seen anything like it….. And – completely unrelated – this piece about turtle navigation from Current Biology (open access).
21/04/2009
ANTARCTIC BIODIVERSITY
May 2007 Amazing discoveries of fantastic new animals deep in the freezing sea around Antarctica. Described in this article in Nature (subscription needed to get past abstract), and in these pieces from The Independent and the BBC. Pictures here.
20/04/2009
NEW ANIMALS REVEALED AS GLACIERS MELT
March 2007 Images from the Antarctic survey show new animals colonizing the sea bed after a huge part of the ice shelf had calved a massive iceberg. Article from The Independent providing background to the images.
