Mysterious Deep-Sea Animal Rediscovered After 116 Years

Shark apparently attacks, kills huge elephant seal off Piedras Blancas

Shark activity off the Central Coast hit close to home for a bull elephant seal at Piedras Blancas, which died from an apparent shark bite just days after a shark snatched a lingcod from a fisherman’s line off Montaña de Oro.

Heinrichs said the size of larger seals usually discourages sharks from attacking. “Younger seals, juveniles weighing 1,000 to 2,000 pounds, are usually considered more desirable prey, for exactly that reason,” she said. “A big bull can turn around and bite his attacker. An injured shark is effectively a dead shark.”

Every shark week special ever

Presenter: Sharks are actually quite gentle creatures see?

Presenter: Gets into the water

Narrator: HE JUMPS INTO THE OCEAN PUTTING HIS LIFE IN MORTAL DANGER

Ancient ‘otter bear’ may have popped clams off rocks like a bottle opener

By Sid Perkins

A creature that roamed the coasts of the Pacific Northwest about 20 million years ago may have had a feeding style like no other mammal, a new study suggests.

Kolponomos is known only from two bearlike skulls, jawbones, and some toe bones found a few decades ago, so scientists aren’t sure where it fits on the carnivore family tree or even what it really looked like (one artist’s idea is seen above).

Rather than having cheek teeth that could shear meat, as many carnivores do, Kolponomos’s molars were similar to the flattened, low-crowned teeth that otters use to crush their shelled prey—yet the creature lived long before anything similar to modern-day otters evolved.

Now, a new analysis using the same sort of computer software that engineers employ to analyze bridges and aircraft parts suggests that Kolponomos may have collected its shelly prey in a unique way…

(read more: Science Magazine/AAAS)

illustration by Roman Uchytel

This picture looks just like another dead fish washed up on shore - until you realize that it’s actually a whale, and those are grizzly bears standing on it.

(Source)

Is Ransom Okay I Heard A Coral Reef Died

Climate change could kill 534,000 people in 2050

If you’ve ever needed a statistic to slap you in the face to make you give a damn about climate change, this is it: A new report from The Lancet estimates more than 500,000 adults could die in 2050, thanks to how climate change will kill crop productivity, altering the diets and available food all over the world.

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Taphonomy

The Japanese sawshark is a sawshark of the family Pristiophoridae, found in the northwest Pacific Ocean around Japan, Korea, and northern China. It has a flat snout, studded with teeth, which resembles a serrated saw. Protruding from the middle of the saw-like snout are two long, sensitive, whisker-like barbels. The sawshark uses these barbels, along with electro-receptors located on the underside of its saw (Ampullae of Lorenzini) to help it find prey buried in the sand as it cruises along the bottom of the ocean. [x]

Do animals have sex for fun? This video attempts to answer a question all of us might have asked ourselves at some point!

The dancers of the sea | Peter Chadwick