Deep Sea Magic!
Ah, scientists. How much they add to our understanding of the universe.
Today's episode of Why the Beckstar Has a Nerd Fetish focuses on the oceans, where an attempt at making a full census of marine life by 2010 is already producing strange and awesome data.
How about, for example, the multitude of never-seen-before species found in the Antarctic, including strange jellyfish and other gelatinous organisms that thrive without light?
Or, how about the yeti crab, a new species found near Easter Island?
Hi, I am hairy and pretty.
Or the "Jurassic Shrimp", believed extinct for 50 million years, and now found near Australia?
50 million years in the making. Coming soon to a barbecue near you.
They've also found that life is thriving in some really inhospitable locales - next to extreme heat vents and in areas of the ocean that never see light. We knew this before, but the abundance of life is impressive and unexpected.
But my favourite thing in marine biology has to be the deep sea creatures. They've found hundreds of new ones in this census, and believe that the under-studied deep sea ecosystems may play a crucial role in regulating global climate. Go science!
Deep sea creatures are just so different than any form of life we see up here on the carpet. They look positively extra-terrestrial. These illustrations are of a mild sampling of the lifeforms we've already documented, and there are clearly many more. So, so, so, so awesome.
All images from this site, which is in Japanese but still really cool
Or just check out this vid. It's about 10 minutes, but trust me - it's worth it.
Absolutely fascinating BBC documentary on deep sea creatures
3 comments:
After the tsunami hit there were a few e-mail messages of reported "wash ups".
The e-mail contained pictures of weird deep sea creatures and claimed that the tsunami brought them ashore.
rubbish, you can find the pics here.
http://www.oceans.gov.au/norfanz/CreatureFeature.htm
I heard about that, but I also heard that they were fraudulent. Snopes (my favourite debunker) had an article about it here.
It's interesting to see your link comes from the Auz government, though. Now I don't know what to believe.
Regardless, those serpent stars are totally amazing.
B
If you dig weird and wonderful animals, you will dig the Burgess Shale (Field, B.C.). In case you haven't heard of it, the shale is special for a few reasons. Firstly, and probably most importantly, it contains fossils of the first animals to appear in the geologic record. Prior to the animals of the Burgess Shale, there wasn't too much going on in terms of life on the planet aside from blue-green algae (stromatolites), jellyfish like creatures (the Ediacaran fauna), and some poorly understood shelly creatures (the Tommotian fauna). So, not only does the Burgess Shale record an explosion of animal life on the planet (the Cambrian Explosion), it preserves fossils of animals with more diverse body plans than we see today. Some of these animals are completely alien in appearance (i.e. the 5 eyed, trunk-bearing Opabinia). The idea of animal life being more diverse way back then is kindof counter intuitive, as common evolutionary thought up til' the discovery of the shale was that diversity increased with time. Also remarkable is that the Burgess Shale preserves soft tissue. This is totally cool, because the odds of fossilizing something like a slug or worm are pretty low. They usually get gobbled up by other beasties, or their remains are destroyed during diagenesis (turning sediments into sedimentary rocks) or plate tectonic processes (i.e. pushing the fossil bearing rocks from the bottom of oceans to the tops of mountains). The Burgess Shale: Go for the scenery. Stay for the fossils.
Totally dorking out,
Ty.
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