Rock-boring bivalves are much more diverse than non-boring mollusks
A new study reveals that there are many ways bivalves bore through solid rock, but a lack of habitat may lock them into an evolutionary dead end.
A new study reveals that there are many ways bivalves bore through solid rock, but a lack of habitat may lock them into an evolutionary dead end.
Plants & Animals
13 hours ago
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Geologists are interested in the sedimentary cycle—erosion from mountains that forms sand that is carried out to the ocean—because it's foundational for understanding how the planet works.
Earth Sciences
18 hours ago
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How do we go from protecting eight percent of marine areas to 30 percent in less than 10 years? This question is at the heart of a global forum in Canada this weekend aiming to save marine ecosystems under threat from overfishing, ...
Ecology
Feb 4, 2023
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43
When imagining the deep sea, we often think of a cold, dark and empty wasteland, sparsely populated by monstrous-looking creatures of the deep. But in fissures along the seabed, ocean water superheated by the Earth's magma ...
Ecology
Jan 24, 2023
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"We know more about the moon than the deep sea."
Ecology
Jan 16, 2023
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A new study led by the University of Vienna in which the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) has participated reveals that fishes living in the dark part of the oceans (essentially below 200 m depth in the water column) ...
Evolution
Jan 12, 2023
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Since 1934, the Redfield ratio—the recurring ratio of 106:16:1 of carbon to nitrogen to phosphorus (C:N:P) in phytoplankton and the pathways by which these elements are circulated throughout all parts of the Earth—has ...
Ecology
Jan 5, 2023
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80
Climate-driven heating of seawater is causing a slowdown of deep circulation patterns in the Atlantic and Southern oceans, according to Earth system scientists at the University of California, Irvine, and if this process ...
Environment
Jan 4, 2023
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Surrounded by a vast ocean underneath a thick ice shell, Enceladus is a hot candidate for potentially harboring alien life. A team of researchers led by the University of Arizona concluded that a future mission could provide ...
Astrobiology
Dec 21, 2022
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574
Air-sea diffusion flux is the main source of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the open ocean. The oceanic biological pump, current advection, and eddy diffusion affect the distribution of PCBs in the ocean surface and ...
Earth Sciences
Dec 19, 2022
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The deep sea, or deep layer, is the lowest layer in the ocean, existing below the thermocline, at a depth of 1000 fathoms (1828 m) or more. Little or no light penetrates this area of the ocean, and most of its organisms rely on falling organic matter produced in the photic zone for subsistence. For this reason scientists assumed life would be sparse in the deep ocean, but virtually every probe has revealed that, on the contrary, life is abundant in the deep ocean.
From the time of Pliny until the expedition in the ship Challenger between 1872 and 1876 to prove Pliny wrong; its deep-sea dredges and trawls brought up living things from all depths that could be reached. Perhaps one day man will be more like aqua man, and roam the ocean depths with the fish creatures alike. Yet even in the twentieth century scientists continued to imagine that life at great depth was insubstantial, or somehow inconsequential. The eternal dark, the almost inconceivable pressure, and the extreme cold that exist below one thousand meters were, they thought, so forbidding as to have all but extinguished life. The reverse is in fact true....(Below 200 meters) lies the largest habitat on earth.
In 1960 the Bathyscaphe Trieste descended to the bottom of the Marianas Trench near Guam, at 35,798 feet (10,911 meters), the deepest spot on earth. If Mount Everest were submerged there, its peak would be more than a mile beneath the surface. At this great depth a small flounder-like fish was seen moving away from the bathyscaphe's spotlight. The Japanese research submersible Kaiko was the only vessel capable of reaching this depth, and it was lost in 2003.
We know more about the moon than the deepest parts of the ocean. Until the late 1970s little was known about the possibility of life on the deep ocean floor but the the discovery of thriving colonies of shrimp and other organisms around hydrothermal vents changed that. Before the discovery of the undersea vents, all life was thought to be driven by the sun. But these organisms get their nutrients from the earth's mineral deposits directly. These organisms thrive in completely lightless and anaerobic environments, in highly saline water that may reach 300 °F (149 °C), drawing their sustainance from hydrogen sulfide, which is highly toxic to all terrestrial life. The revolutionary discovery that life can exist without oxygen or light significantly increases the chance of there being life elsewhere in the universe. Scientists now speculate that Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, may have conditions that could support life beneath its surface which is speculated to be a liquid ocean beneath the icy crust.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA