Latest Megafauna Stories
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Whether they hunt for food by opening their mouths while diving deep into the ocean or skimming along its surface, many whale species rely on their baleen teeth to filter tasty morsels from the mouthfuls of seawater they take in. According to Alexander Werth, a biology professor from Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, no one has ever looked into the mechanism behind how the hairy substance actually traps food. “The standard view...
San Diego Infographic Whale Watching and Migration by Marriott (PRWEB) March 11, 2013 The warm waters of the Pacific Ocean along southern California’s coastline are a popular shared destination as vacationers from around the world make their way to enjoy fun in the sun and gray whales from the Arctic Sea migrate there annually to give birth to their young. Beautifully described and illustrated in an exciting new infographic on the tumblr blog by Marriott International, gray whales...
Pew calls for action at CITES to prevent species from being traded to extinction BANGKOK, March 1, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- According to scientific findings released today in the peer-reviewed journal Marine Policy, the number of sharks killed each year in commercial fisheries is estimated at 100 million, with a range between 63 million and 273 million. The authors also warn that the rate of fishing for shark species, many of which grow slowly and reproduce late in life,...
"Whale Watching Spoken Here" marks the start of land-based gray whale watching on the Washington coast, which begins in late March and continues through June. Platforms near steep cliff faces and wide open beaches provide multiple vantage points for avid and casual whale watchers on Washington's Long Beach Peninsula. ILWACO, Wash. (PRWEB) February 21, 2013 The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, at Cape Disappointment State Park in Ilwaco, will participate in a week’s...
Findings could lead to greater understanding of sex differences in language acquisition Male rat pups have more of a specific brain protein associated with language development than females, according to a study published February 20 in The Journal of Neuroscience. The study also found sex differences in the brain protein in a small group of children. The findings may shed light on sex differences in communication in animals and language acquisition in people. Sex differences in early...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Although whales are mammals, they do not resemble any of the mammals surrounding us on land and have a unique evolutionary history. Whales have a triangular fluke for a tail, and they have no (visible) hind legs or body hair. One of the strangest differences between whales and their terrestrial cousins, however, is in the whale's mouth. Whale teeth are simpler and more "peg like" than those of other mammals. A new study led by Dr....
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Fossil discoveries are nothing new. And finding new species is just as common. But when you find a fossil of an animal new to science, things start to get more interesting—especially when that discovery includes not one, but four new species from the same genus. This is exactly what occurred in the Laguna Canyon outcrop, a fossil bed unearthed during a highway construction project in California in 2000. The site, which was...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Feeling like your feet are a little sore or you have a backache after a day of shopping or walking around town? Well, scientists now say you can blame that on evolution. Bruce Latimer, an anthropologist from the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine, says adapting to upright walking has resulted in physical challenges that affect most humans. "If an engineer were given the task to design the human body, he or...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online For over 50 years, conservationists have been championing the protection of humpback whales—and as the population begins to recover from decades of whaling, scientists are starting to ask about the size of the whale population before they were hunted en masse. Using a refined genetic analysis, a group of American scientists has estimated the humpback’s historical population size at more than 100,000 whales, according to their...
JERSEY CITY, New Jersey, February 12, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Sapiens International Corporation [http://www.sapiens.com/home.html ], (NASDAQ and TASE: SPNS), a global provider of innovative software solutions, announced today that its ALIS [http://www.sapiens.com/life-insurance-software.htm ] policy administration system for life, annuity and pensions has been recognized by Ovum [http://ovum.com/about-ovum ], a global industry analyst firm, as a "Market Leader" in its recently...
Latest Megafauna Reference Libraries
The Antarctic minke whale (Balaenoptera bonaerensis), also known as the southern minke whale, is one of two minke whales within the Mysticeti suborder, which contains baleen and rorqual whales. It can be found in every ocean in the southern hemisphere, residing in Antarctic waters in the summer months and northern waters in the winter months, where its range overlaps that the smaller common minke whale. The Antarctic minke whale was once classified with the common minke whale as a single...
The Baikal seal (Pusa sibirica), also known as the nerpa or the Lake Baikal seal, is a true seal in the Phocidae family that is native to Lake Baikal located in Siberia. This species is one of three seals that reside solely in fresh water areas. It is not known exactly how these seals came to inhabit such an isolated area, but some experts assert that a sea-passage was formed that linked the Arctic Ocean and Lake Baikal. The Baikal seal is one of the smallest of all true seal species,...
Image Caption: Fossil of Feresa Attenuata, Shimonoseki Marine Science Museum KAIKYOUKAN, Japan. Credit: OpenCage/Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 2.5) The pygmy killer whale is widely distributed in tropical and sub-tropical waters worldwide. Regular sightings of this species occur off the coast of Hawaii and Japan, and also in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka and Lesser Antilles. In the Atlantic the pygmy killer whale has been seen off the coast of South Carolina and Senegal. This species swims in...
The Ross seal (Ommatophoca rossii) is a true seal in the Phocidae family, and can only be found on pack ice in Antarctica. This species was formally described by James Clark Ross in 1841, during his British Antarctic Expedition. It is very uncommon to see in its range and rarely leaves the pack ice, with stray individuals occurring off southeast Australia or sub-Antarctic islands. The Ross seal can reach an average length between 5.5 and 6.9 feet, although some females can reach up to 8.2...
The ribbon seal (Histriophoca fasciata) is a true seal within the family Phocidae that can be found in the North Pacific Sea. It prefers a habitat in arctic and subarctic areas like the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea. As is typical to seal species, it will leave the water during the winter and spring months, where it will remain on pack ice to breed, birth pups, and molt. For the rest of the year these seals will live in open water, although some will occasionally move north as the ice...
