FEATURES
Blog entry
The blanket octopus can rip a poisonous tentacle from a Portuguese man-o-war and wield it like a sword to ward off enemies as it soars through the ocean trailing its webbed cloak behind it...
Audio MORE STORIES
Come one, come all! See the amazing, the astonishing, half-animal, half-plant!...
LATEST POSTS
May 1, 2013 - 9:48AM
These "elevator" rudists, an ancient bivalve , used one long heavy valve to anchor themselves in the sediment. They used their tentacles (shown here in pink) to filter food from the sea water. Discover more about the ancient...
LEARN MORE
Bioluminescence is one of the more captivating adaptations that have evolved in marine animals. It's the ability of...
MORE EVOLUTION
Jul 2 2010 - 12:33pm
This 1837 sketch is Charles Darwin’s first diagram of an evolutionary tree. It appears in his First Notebook on Transmutation of Species (1837).
Nov 16 2012 - 5:05pm
For the last 150 years, paleontologists have debated the origins of the great white shark . Many believe that they descended from the 50-foot megalodon, also known as the megatooth shark (...
Sep 24 2010 - 12:25pm
Whales swim, but their ancestors walked. Whales are mammals (like us) whose ancestors lived on land. Life probably began in the ocean and then evolved to colonize the land. Yet the whale’s ancestors...
May 11 2012 - 9:58am
Editor's note: Read Nick's first blog post about "toothed" baleen whales to see what their team is excavating on Vancouver Island. We departed from Port Renfrew on Tuesday morning on the Michelle...
Jan 26 2010 - 10:45am
This family tree shows how the ancestors of whales moved gradually from land to sea. Early whales took advantage of abundant marine resources. Baleen whales evolved later as polar climates cooled and...
May 7 2012 - 3:34pm
The whales that we see in today's world can broadly be split into two groups: those with teeth (odontocetes), and those that have baleen (mysticetes) instead of teeth. These two groups share a common...
Jan 26 2012 - 10:53am
Sirenians , or seacows, are a group of marine mammals that include manatees and dugongs . Currently, only a single species of seacow is found anywhere in the world. However, the fossil record of...
Jul 11 2011 - 2:12pm
Come one, come all! See the amazing, the astonishing, half-animal, half-plant! Journey to Tampa Bay, Florida, where scientist Skip Pierce and one of his students first made a remarkable discovery...
Jan 26 2010 - 10:45am
Vertebrates evolved in the sea and eventually moved onto land. The ancestors of whales later returned to the sea, taking advantage of its rich food supplies. As early whales adapted to their new...
May 1 2013 - 9:48am
These "elevator" rudists, an ancient bivalve , used one long heavy valve to anchor themselves in the sediment. They used their tentacles (shown here in pink) to filter food from the sea water...
Jan 26 2010 - 10:45am
This transparent cockatoo squid ( Leachia sp.), also known as a glass squid, lives in the depths of the ocean and has many adaptations to help it survive there. It retains ammonia solutions inside...
Dec 8 2009 - 3:08pm
See some of the remarkable adaptations that deep-sea animals have evolved. Learn more about their habitat and how marine scientists research it in our Deep Ocean Exploration section.
Aug 18 2011 - 4:24pm
Bioluminescence is one of the more captivating adaptations that have evolved in marine animals. It's the ability of organisms to create and emit light. Dive underwater and you may witness lightshows...
Nov 4 2010 - 1:41pm
The Galápagos Islands site in Ecuador was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978. Located in the equatorial Pacific Ocean nearly 1000 km from South America, the Galapagos Islands and the...
Jan 18 2013 - 9:28am
For a long time, scientists thought that some small tentacled fossils were early ancestors of jellyfish. But a new study has found that these ancient animals are actually related to an entirely...
Aug 21 2012 - 8:51am
This early whale was well suited to life at sea. But it also lived on land. An ancestor of the right whale , Maiacetus lived 49-40 million years ago. It had flipper-like limbs and webbed feet, like...
Aug 16 2011 - 2:31pm
A video of the Palauan primitive cave eel ( Protanguilla palau ) swimming in the Pacific off the Republic of Palau . Jiro Sakaue, a Japanese research diver, first discovered the new genus and species...
Sep 30 2009 - 11:21am
Whales have existed for million of years. Watch this animation, from the Sant Ocean Hall , to see how they evolved from land-dwellers to the animals we know today. Discover more about whale evolution...
Pages
