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Many New Species Found Under Antarctica
gt_mattex writes to tell us The Globe and Mail is reporting that quite a few new species have been found in the ocean beneath the Antarctic ice. From the article: "It is too early to say exactly how many new species were discovered in the Antarctic, many in the Weddell Sea, where ice crushed the ship of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton in 1915. The scientists saw more strange creatures than familiar ones, says Ron O'Dor, an expert in octopuses and squid from Halifax's Dalhousie University and the chief scientist in charge of producing the first marine life census of the planet by 2010."
Is this the initial stage of the Second Impact?
It's been millenia and we still don't know all the life on our planet. I always look forward to articles like this, they really tell us how little we do know.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
"A school of fish the size of Manhattan off the New Jersey coast. About 20 million herring were travelling together."
... *sigh*
That soon we'll find ways to make ocean life go extinct in those parts which so far relativly are protected from our interferance.. With our normal area's of fishing drying up quickly, how long will it take before we go and do our thing there too
Here comes the Second Impact. Glad I'm a couple hundred miles inland and not living in Japan...
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
IT's the ANCIENT outpost
"octopi and squids"? :-)
Currently hooked on AMP
I get suspicious whenever a creature purported to have gone extinct X million years ago is discovered alive and well.
It seems to happen with some regularity.
It seems to me, if you find a fossil of an animal you believe to be extinct, you will probably test it with the assumption it is of relatively old age.
I think you probably find what you're looking for.
Anyway, not trying to start a flame war. But that's probably going to happen anyway. ("YOU IGNORANT BASTARD DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW DATING WORKS!!!")
clifgriffin > blog
"Somebody in this camp ain't what he appears to be. Right now that may be one or two of us. By spring, it could be all of us."
I value politeness. If you extend it to me, I'll extend it to you.
The article describes some pretty odd creatures.
I mean, without a picture of that centimeter-in-diameter protozoan, how the hell am I supposed to imagine how it looks like, much less the more important facets of such a discovery... such as how does it taste?
Other then that
;)
Seek also the difference between "then" and "than"
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Sure they could be harmful. In fact, where two species evolve seperately, it is less likely that they'll be able to coexist peacefully. Just look at the species that have been introduced to Australia.
I think the greater danger here, though, is that humans will disturb or destroy the new-found species or their habitats.
Actually I already knew how long the study had been taking place. They are attempting to catalog all the life in the oceans when we haven't even cataloged all life in the rain forests, which is a far smaller task. Now when you consider that the surface area (not volume) of the ocean is 75% of the earth, the chances of encountering every creature in the ocean seems ridiculously small, much less the chance that every creature is encountered and properly documented in all of 9 years. The jokes on you.
My god -- it's full of geeks.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I'm not sure enough people get the NGE allusion
Money is the root of all evil?
Yes but have they found any evidence of Elder Things yet? Or at the very least some Shoggoths?
that little nugget of news was reason to find cheer, i think
a colossal school of herring? off new jersey? isn't that good news?
why the despondent reaction to that news item? there are certainly tons of news items to find depressing reactions to about ocean life and man's hungry stomach... but that particular nugget of news is reason to cheer, don't you think?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As in just fell out of the tree of evolution?
...bah....
Those critter are most likely checking out the mini-subs and shaking their heads and thinking "Oh, look! A new species!"
but, anyways, here you go, lotsa pictures
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
take the common wood louse, that you can find under any rock in any forest
now, blow it up a thousand fold in size
there you go, running around the ocean floor
amazing indeed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Everything in Australia is deadly. The spiders are deadly, the snakes are deadly, the crocodiles are deadly, the plants are deadly, the driving in Sydney is definitely deadly, the TV commercials are lethal... I never did find out what happened to those rabbits that escaped from a research facility on a Government-owned island and made it to shore, back in '95. As I recall, they were being used for some research into some lethal pathogen or other. Since there are Australians still alive, I take it that the crisis was brought under control, but that was cutting it a little fine. I guess we can add the Australian Government to things that are lethal, though.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What point are you trying to make, should they give up because their ultimate goal will never be reached?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Besides, in 15 years or less there won't be enough of a food chain in the oceans to sustain most of the organisms that do still exist and without a gene bank capable of storing that kind of volume of information there's no possibility of either having any usable data OR being able to revive the ecology once conditions have returned to saner levels. Collecting photos is all fine and good, but in not that long a time that is ALL we'll have, unless serious efforts are made to either conserve or genetically catalog.
(And, frankly, I can't see the US Government even getting past the planning stages in a mere 15 years - assuming it even got that far. As they're the only group with the clout and the money to build a center capable of analyzing and storing a few hundred million DNA/mtDNA databases in that kind of timeframe, most of the information currently in the oceans is beyond any possibility of recovery.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A new isle at the fish market!
Do not look into LASER with remaining eye!
You, for one, must have meant sashimi.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
"so stop talking about it and move on, or change your attitude about life in the ocean"
I can attest to that.
I used to believe it would be the worst thing in the world. If it was forced upon me, I thought, I would surely die rather than submit to such a harsh and painful existence. How could I eat? How could I breathe? Both would come at significant hardship, all as my skin shrivelled and those few comforts I'd brought from my land-dwelling past rusted away.
Yes, I was someone who, like many, clung to the land desperately.
How silly that attitude seems to me now. The atmosphere is clogged with pollutants, the crops doused with carcinogens, the cities governed by rich men who guide the masses' efforts into their own purses.
This is what changed my attitude about life in the ocean, and that is what, I hope, will help you change yours.
Actually, the parties to the Dresden Agreement of 1931 have sent repeated followup expeditions, but the crawling chaos got them all. And the Russians are deploying shoggoths in attack mode in the Khyber pass... sucks to be in that universe, I gather. (The robot to be slurped is "A Colder War" by Charles Stross. Highly recommended.)
It'll be interesting to see what they find in Lake Vostok, which is a freshwater lake as big as Lake Ontario and has been sealed under Antarctic ice for up to a million years.
Could be the perfect test for a Cryobot mission to Europa
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
Naah, Vegemite is like 1080, only toxic to non-natives :)
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
are octopuses, not octopi.
Attr. to Patricia T. O'Conner, as is the quote, "Octopi is for suckers".
I am not a crackpot.
Instead of listing all of the deadly things about Australia, it's much easier to list the non-deadly things:
- some of the sheep
Thanks Terry Pratchett.
And for those who don't even get the "NGE" reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_Genesis_Evangeli on_glossary#Second_Impact.
(And yes, I had to look it up myself.)
I remember growing up in adelaide.
'don't' walk on the grass without shoes'
'don't lean on the hedges'
'don't go near the lizards'
'don't dig in the garden'
and in Broadbeach
'don't play with the jellyfish'
'don't go in the sea without shoes'
Not that these rules worked especially well on me, I broke almost all of them on a reguler basis, and so did my friends. It's amazing Aussie kids survive to adulthood.
I came to england at 7, and was shocked to find kids running from pissy little spiders and bee's....
myxomatosis was released back in 1950, and suppressed the rabbit population quite thoroughly for a couple of decades before they started to evolve immunity.
Steady on. You'll start a flamewar with the creationists.
What if a bunch of rabbits intelligently designed immunity?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
yea, I refer to this as the "cut and run" date. At which point we all know the ocean life wins. I think we need to "stay the course." Not set a date that the ocean life can hide until.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
And don't forget koalas. They a lurking everywhere waiting for human flesh. Even a small koala can rip you apart in a matter of seconds.