First egg from Antarctica is big and might belong to an extinct sea lizard

Date: June 17, 2020

Source: University of Texas at Austin

In 2011, Chilean scientists discovered a mysterious fossil in Antarctica that looked like a deflated football. For nearly a decade, the specimen sat unlabeled and unstudied in the collections of Chile's National Museum of Natural History, with scientists identifying it only by its sci-fi movie-inspired nickname -- "The Thing."

An analysis led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin has found that the fossil is a giant, soft-shell egg from about 66 million years ago. Measuring in at more than 11 by 7 inches, the egg is the largest soft-shell egg ever discovered and the second-largest egg of any known animal.

The specimen is the first fossil egg found in Antarctica and pushes the limits of how big scientists thought soft-shell eggs could grow. Aside from its astounding size, the fossil is significant because scientists think it was laid by an extinct, giant marine reptile, such as a mosasaur -- a discovery that challenges the prevailing thought that such creatures did not lay eggs.

"It is from an animal the size of a large dinosaur, but it is completely unlike a dinosaur egg," said lead author Lucas Legendre, a postdoctoral researcher at UT Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences. "It is most similar to the eggs of lizards and snakes, but it is from a truly giant relative of these animals."

A study describing the fossil egg was published in Nature on June 17.

Co-author David Rubilar-Rogers of Chile's National Museum of Natural History was one of the scientists who discovered the fossil in 2011. He showed it to every geologist who came to the museum, hoping somebody had an idea, but he didn't find anyone until Julia Clarke, a professor in the Jackson School's Department of Geological Sciences, visited in 2018.

"I showed it to her and, after a few minutes, Julia told me it could be a deflated egg!" Rubilar-Rogers said.

Using a suite of microscopes to study samples, Legendre found several layers of membrane that confirmed that the fossil was indeed an egg. The structure is very similar to transparent, quick-hatching eggs laid by some snakes and lizards today, he said. However, because the fossil egg is hatched and contains no skeleton, Legendre had to use other means to zero in on the type of reptile that laid it.

Read on

Antarctic biodiversity hotspots exist wherever penguins and seals poop

Date:  May 9, 2019

Source:  Cell Press

Scientists have found that on the desolate Antarctic peninsula, nitrogen-rich poop from colonies of penguins and seals enriches the soil so well that it helps create biodiversity hotspots throughout the region. Their work, appearing May 9 in the journal Current Biology, finds that the influence of this excrement can extend more than 1,000 meters beyond the colony.

Researchers braved the wicked cold of the Antarctic and maneuvered through fields of animal waste and groups of clamoring elephant seals, gentoo, chinstrap, and Adélie penguins to examine the soils and plants surrounding these colonies. "What we see is that the poo produced by seals and penguins partly evaporates as ammonia," says Stef Bokhorst, a researcher in the Department of Ecological Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. "Then, the ammonia gets picked up by the wind and is blown inland, and this makes its way into the soil and provides the nitrogen that primary producers need in order to survive in this landscape."

In fact, this process allows ammonia to enrich an area up to 240 times the size of the colony. And the results of this enrichment: a thriving community of mosses and lichens, which in turn supports an incredible number of small invertebrates, like springtails and mites. "You can find millions of them per square meter here, but in grasslands in the US or Europe, there are only about 50,000 to 100,000 per square meter," says Bokhorst. "It took months and months of sitting in the lab counting and IDing them under a microscope," he says, and he notes that trekking through the bitter temperatures of the Antarctic was far preferable to that task.

Read more

Coping with climate stress in Antarctica

Some polar fish can cope with warming or ocean acidification, but not both together

Date:  January 17, 2018

Source:  University of California - Davis

Summary:

Some Antarctic fish living in the planet's coldest waters are able to cope with the stress of rising carbon dioxide levels the ocean. They can even tolerate slightly warmer waters. But they can't deal with both climate change stressors at the same time, according to a new study.

Read on  

Scientists discover 280-million-year-old fossil forest in Antarctica

Trees are believed to have lived through extremes of complete darkness and continuous sunlight 

Chloe Farand 

Geologists have discovered 280-million-year-old tree fossils in what is believed to be evidence of the oldest polar forest found in Antarctica. 

Erik Gulbranson and John Isbell from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee trekked across the Transantarctic Mountains during the continent’s summer, between November and January. 

They found the ancient ​specimens among the rocks where a leafy forest once grew. 

The team previously found fossil fragments of 13 trees which they estimated were over 260 million years old, meaning the forest would have grown before the first dinosaurs appeared at the end of the Permian period. 

The team have now returned to the frozen slopes once more to find out how the forest could have flourished there. 

Continued  

World's biggest wildlife reserve planned for Antarctica in global campaign

Vast 1.8m sq km fishing-free zone would protect species, such as penguins, leopard seals and whales, and help mitigate the effects of climate change

March of the Penguins heralds Antarctic protection campaign - in pictures

Matthew Taylor

Sat 13 Jan 2018 08.01 GMTLast modified on Mon 15 Jan 2018 15.31 GMT

A global campaign is being launched to turn a huge tract of the seas around the Antarctic into the world’s biggest sanctuary, protecting wildlife and helping the fight against climate change.

The huge 1.8m sq km reserve – five times the size of Germany – would ban all fishing in a vast area of the Weddell Sea and around the Antarctic Peninsula, safeguarding species including penguins, killer whales, leopard seals and blue whales.

The idea was originally put forward by the EU and is being backed by a new Greenpeace campaign to be launched on Monday. The proposal already has the support of several countries – including the UK – and will go before a conference of the Antarctic nations in October.

Will McCallum, of Greenpeace’s new Protect the Antarctic campaign, said: “The next few years are absolutely essential for the future of our oceans and we are in desperate need for governments to come together and do what is best for these amazing ecosystems.”

He said a decision in 2016 to create a smaller sanctuary around the Ross Sea in the Antarctic proved global cooperation to protect the oceans is possible.

Continued  

Unknown species may thrive in Antarctic caves

8 September 2017

Animals and plants may be living in warm caves under Antarctica's ice, according to a study.

Australian researchers said that Mount Erebus, an active volcano on Antarctica's Ross Island, is surrounded by caves hollowed out in the ice by steam.

Soil samples retrieved from the caves have revealed intriguing traces of DNA from mosses, algae and small animals.

The research has been published in the journal Polar Biology.

"It can be really warm inside the caves - up to 25C in some caves. You could wear a T-shirt in there and be pretty comfortable," said co-author Dr Ceridwen Fraser, from the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra.

"There's light near the cave mouths, and light filters deeper into some caves where the overlying ice is thin."

Readmore  

New species of marine worm discovered in Antarctica

Date: February 13, 2017

Source: Hokkaido University

A team of Japanese scientists has discovered a new species of polychaete, a type of marine annelid worm, 9-meters deep underwater near Japan's Syowa Station in Antarctica, providing a good opportunity to study how animals adapt to extreme environments.

International efforts are currently underway in Antarctica to build long-term monitoring systems for land and coastal organisms from an ecological conservation standpoint. To this end, the accumulation of continent-wide fauna information is essential, but Japan is lagging behind in gathering and analyzing such data around Syowa Station, particularly in regard to coastal marine life.

To address this problem, in 2015 a team of researchers, including Keiichi Kakui, a lecturer at Hokkaido University, and Megumu Tsujimoto, a postdoctoral researcher at Japan's National Institute of Polar Research, started researching marine specimens stored at the institute, as well as newly collected specimens. As a part of this process, they conducted microscopic analyses to examine two annelid worms that scuba divers collected 8-9 meters deep on January 16th, 1981, at Nishinoura near Syowa Station.

The worm found 9 meters deep turned out to be a new, unnamed polychaete -- a variety with a thick, gel-like coat and conspicuous, long notochaeta. The team named the new species Flabegraviera fujiae, taking after the icebreaker ship "Fuji" used in the expedition in 1981. The specimen collected 8 meters deep was recognized as Flabegraviera mundata, and was deemed to have been collected at the shallowest depth ever recorded for the Flabegraviera genus.

Continued

Newfound Ancient 'Sea Monster' Is Largest Yet from Antarctica

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | November 9, 2016 12:29pm ET


About 66 million years ago, an ancient sea monster the height of a five-story office building once gnashed its sharp teeth as it swam around the dark waters of Antarctica, a new study finds.

The newfound beast, known as a mosasaur — a Cretaceous-age aquatic reptile that sped through the ancient seas using its paddle-like limbs and long tail — is only the second fossilized mosasaur skull ever found in Antarctica.

The mosasaur specimen is different enough from other known species that it qualifies for its own genus and species. Researchers named it Kaikaifilu hervei after "Kai-Kai filú," an almighty giant reptile that owns the sea in legends from the Mapuche culture from southern Chile and Argentina. The species name honors Francisco Hervé, a world-renowned Chilean geologist and Antarctic explorer, the researchers said.


Continued

Someone has just found a sea monster off Antarctica using Google Earth

Toby Meyjes for Metro.co.uk

Sunday 19 Jun 2016 5:17 pm

"Kraken" spotted on Google Earth

It is said to have terrorised ships off Norway and Greenland for centuries but now it seems the mystery of the Kraken has been solved – thanks to Google Earth.

If you’re not familiar with the tale of the perhaps-not-mythical sea monster, references date back to the late 13th Century and mostly revolve around a huge tentacled monster devouring ships and men.

Some stories mention it as having tentacles, while others that it is more like a massive whale.

Either way, it doesn’t sound like something you’d want to come across when on voyage of any kind.

Sightings of the Kraken have died down recently, which suggest that either it too has gone to a watery grave, or, on new evidence, may have migrated to a new life near Antarctica.

Taken near Deception Island in the South Shetlands it shows a ‘fin’ or rock or something breaking the surface of the water with a larger body underneath.

All in all it is fairly alarming.

Read more: 

First species of yeti crab from hydrothermal vent systems near Antarctica described

Date:June 24, 2015

Source:University of Southampton

Summary:The first species of yeti crab from hydrothermal vent systems of the East Scotia Ridge in the Southern Ocean, Antarctica, has been described. This Yeti Crab is famous for its body, which is densely covered by bristles -- known as setae -- and bacteria, giving it a fur-like appearance.

Continued ...

Fish live beneath Antarctica

Drilling under 740 metres of the Ross Ice Shelf reveals translucent fish living in perpetual darkness and cold.

Douglas Fox

21 January 2015

An article by Scientific American.

Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling Project

The first low-resolution image of a translucent fish that researchers discovered beneath Antarctica’s ice reveals two black eyes and various internal organs (coloured blobs).

Stunned researchers in Antarctica have discovered fish and other aquatic animals living in perpetual darkness and cold, beneath a roof of ice 740 metres thick. The animals inhabit a wedge of seawater only 10 metres deep, sealed between the ice above and a barren, rocky seafloor below — a location so remote and hostile the many scientists expected to find nothing but scant microbial life.

A team of ice drillers and scientists made the discovery after lowering a small, custom-built robot down a narrow hole they bored through theRoss Ice Shelf, a slab of glacial ice the size of France that hangs off the coastline of Antarctica and floats on the ocean. The remote water they tapped sits beneath the back corner of the floating shelf, where the shelf meets what would be the shore of Antarctica if all that ice were removed. The spot sits 850 kilometres from the outer edge of the ice shelf, the nearest place where the ocean is in contact with sunlight that allows tiny plankton to grow and sustain a food chain.

Continued ...

Marine biologists unlock the secrets of Antarctica

PETER APPS

Monday 25 August 2014

Marine biologists from across the world have produced an atlas of sea life in the Antarctic Ocean from microbes to whales, finding thousands of new species in the process.

Among the discoveries were crabs that are able to live within the clouds of sulphur emitted by live underwater volcanoes and a new type of barnacle that has stems 50 times longer than its head.

They also found that climate change had potentially caused changes in the breeding patterns of penguins.

The project was the first of this magnitude since the publication of the Antactic Map Folio Series 45 years ago.

Dr Katrin Linse, an expert in Antarctic molluscs at the British Antartic Survey, told The Independent: “Since 1969 there has been no update but lots of science done in that period and lots of species discovered.

Continued ...

On The Front Lines Of Climate Change, Antarctica's Scientists And Penguins Fight For World's Attention (PHOTOS)

Last November, New Zealand outdoorsman Michael Armstrong was watching a cricket match in his local pub when he thought of penguins. A friend had told him about a program that was sending an explorer-in-training to Antarctica to study the effects of climate change, and the application was due in a few hours.

"I thought about this sort of angle where I could talk about the penguins being dressed in tuxedos and Antarctica being their ballroom, but their ballroom was under threat because of global warming and climate change," he recently told The Huffington Post.

The pitch Armstrong made and that of student filmmaker Marli Lopez-Hope were selected from 2,000 applications to participate in Air New Zealand's "No Ordinary Place, No Ordinary Assignment" program. The goal was to highlight the growing peril Earth is facing even in one of its harshest environments.

The pair went to Antarctica with National Geographic photographer Jason Edwards. Together, they spent two weeks in January living atNew Zealand's Scott Base, including three days sleeping on the Ross Ice Shelf among 40,000 breeding pairs of the Adelie penguins. Armstrong and Lopez-Hope assisted with ongoing research projects, including drilling for ice samples, tagging penguins and mapping the ice shelf.

Continued and photos

Frozen moss buried in Antarctica for more than 1,500 years starting to grow again in laboratory

STEVE CONNOR

Monday 17 March 2014

Frozen moss that had been buried in the Antarctic permafrost for more than 1,500 years and showed no sign of life has started to grow again in a laboratory, scientists said.

The moss last grew before the rise of the Roman Empire but its long period of being frozen solid in the ground did not appear to affect its ability to regenerate itself once it was defrosted, the researchers found.

It is the longest period of time that frozen plants have been able to survive. Previously, moss was known to survive being frozen for about 20 years – surviving for a millennium or more suggests the plants may be able to survive an ice age, scientists said.

Samples of the plant were recovered from Signy Island in Antarctica by drilling into a frozen bank of moss that scientists estimated to be at least 2,000 years old. Carbon dating suggested the samples were at least 1,530 years old.

When the moss samples were carefully thawed out in the laboratory, the plants began to grow again from their existing shoots or rhizoids, said Peter Convey of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge.

Continued

A Brooding Marine Worm Found in Antarctica

Nov. 27, 2013 — Brooding is a usual behavior in animals. However, to observe it in a marine worm is exceptional and, more surprisingly, it guards eggs from external threats. The scientific finding, published recently in the journal Polar Biology, was developed by researchers Conxita Àvila and Sergio Taboada, from the Department of Animal Biology of the University of Barcelona (UB) and members of the Institute of Research in Biodiversity (IRBio); Juan Junoy, from the University of Alcalá; Javier Cristobo, from the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, and Gonzalo Giribet and Sónia Andrade, from the Harvard Univesity, among other experts.

Nemerteans are a group of invertebrates mainly found in marine waters. The research group led by Professor Àvila, who coordinates the project Actiquim developed in Antarctica, discovered a new species of nemerteans,Antarctonemertes riesgoae, which has a reproductive strategy unique in this group: it broods like hens.

Continued

Surprising Underwater-Sounds: Humpback Whales Also Spend Their Winter in Antarctica

Sep. 9, 2013 — Biologists and physicists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, found out that not all of the Southern Hemisphere humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) migrate towards the equator at the end of the Antarctic summer. Part of the population remains in Antarctic waters throughout the entire winter. The scientists report this in a current issue of scientific journal PLOS ONE. This surprising discovery based on underwater recordings from the Antarctic acoustic observatory PALAOA. It is located near the research base Neumayer Station III on the ice shelf and regularly records underwater sounds of humpback whales even in the austral winter months.

Sometimes even scientists need the crucial little quantum of luck to obtain new research ideas. For instance Ilse Van Opzeeland, a marine biologist and expert on large whales at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). As she unlocked the door to her office one April morning and, as usual, switched on the live stream of PALAOA, the underwater acoustic observatory, the loudspeakers suddenly resounded with the calls of humpback whales -- and this at a time during which the marine mammals should long have been swimming 7,000 kilometres further away in the warmer waters off Africa. "I was totally surprised, because the textbook-opinion until that day was that humpback whales migrate to Antarctic waters only in the austral summer months. And even then, standing believes were that they would only be feeding on krill in the ice-free regions around 60 degrees south latitude. However, our PALAOA observatory monitors an area 70 degrees south -- so, much further south than hitherto known feeding grounds. "With this in mind, hearing the animals on a winter morning near our observatory was a double surprise," explains the scientist.

Continued

Antarctica's hidden Lake Vostok found to teem with life

Lake Vostok, Antarctica's biggest and deepest subsurface lake, might contain thousands of different kinds of tiny organisms — and perhaps bigger fish as well, researchers report.

The lake, buried under more than 2 miles (3.7 kilometers) of Antarctic ice, has been seen as an earthly analog for ice-covered seas on such worlds as Europa and Enceladus. It's thought to have been cut off from the outside world for as long as 15 million years. But the latest results, reported in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, suggest that the lake isn't as sterile or otherworldly as some scientists might have thought.

More than 3,500 different DNA sequences were identified in samples extracted from layers of ice that have built up just above the surface of the lake. About 95 percent of them were associated with types of bacteria, 5 percent of them had the hallmarks of more complex organisms known as eukaryotes, and two of the sequences were linked to a distinct class of one-celled organisms called archaea.

The sequences included close matches for various types of fungi as well as arthropods, springtails, water fleas and a mollusk. What's more, some of the bacteria from the sample are typically found in fish guts — suggesting that the fish they came from may be swimming around in the lake.

Continued

New Deep-Sea Fish Species Found in Antarctica

To catch Antarctic toothfish, you must bait your hook with Peruvian squid and cast it into the depths of the Ross Sea. This is what a team of Ukrainians did on a fishing trip near Antarctica. But sometimes, Mother Nature trips you up. Sometimes, you catch a hopbeard plunderfish. 

In 2009-2010, Ukrainian mariners happened to pull up three fish that looked unfamiliar. Further analysis found that they were a previously undiscovered species, dubbed the hopbeard plunderfish and described in a study published online April 29 in the journal ZooKeys. The fish bear the scientific name Pogonophryne neyelovi. 

The strange-looking denizens of the deep have brownish-splotched bodies and are shaped somewhat like tadpoles, especially when young, according to the study. They have sharp dorsal fins that extend along the top of their bodies and strange "barbels," which resemble dirty Q-tips, that extend from their chins. 

The longest of the three specimens measured 14 inches (35.5 centimeters). And they really like to live in the deep — they were pulled from depths of up to 4,560 feet (1,390 meters). 

This newfound species is the hopbeard plunderfish

 (Pogonophryne neyelovi). It can live nearly a mile 

under the surface of Antarctica's Ross Sea. 

CREDIT: Gennadiy Shandikov and Richard Eakin / ZooKeys 

The fish have large livers, which fill up to 35 percent of their abdomen. Whether or not that means these sea creatures could drink like, well, fish, is unknown. 

If you're fond of the hopbeard, just wait until you meet its cousins. The genusPogonophryne, also known as the short-barbeled plunderfish, has a total of 22 species. These fish also live in the frigid waters surrounding Antarctica. Some of them live in the Ross Sea, like the hopbeard, which is found offshore of Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf. 

Currently, next to nothing is known about their behavior, diet or what they do down there in the depths. 

Continued: http://www.livescience.com/29456-strange-new-fish-antarctica.html

Antarctic Blue Whales Found With Sound

Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer

Date: 04 April 2013 Time: 03:14 PM ET

Whales may be the biggest animals on Earth, but finding them in the vast open ocean isn't easy.

Now, an Australia-led research team has demonstrated a novel idea for chasing down the massive marine mammals. To search for Antarctic blue whales, the group dropped sonar buoys in the Ross Sea west of Antarctica, and listened for whale calls. They triangulated the whale's location from their calls, and then sailed to the right spot.

During the research cruise, the scientists photographed 57 blue whales, collected 23 skin biopsy samples and stuck on two satellite-tracking tags. They also spotted 11 pygmy blue whales and eight humpback whales, among a total 720 cetacean species (the group that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises).

Read on:  

http://www.livescience.com/28451-antarctic-blue-whale-sonar-tracking.html

Penguins Wear a Shield of Cold Air in Winter

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Emperor penguins “wear” an invisible shield of cold air that helps to prevent body heat loss, allowing the flightless birds to survive the sub-zero temps of Antarctica, a new study finds.

The report, published in the journal Biology Letters, demonstrates just how hardy the birds are.

“In most birds, plumage is able to resist the flow of heat, such that surface temperature is normally a few degrees above ambient temperature,” wrote Dominic McCafferty of the University of Glasgow and his colleagues. For emperor penguins, however, “During clear sky conditions, most outer surfaces of the body were colder than surrounding sub-zero air … In these conditions, the feather surface will paradoxically gain heat by convection from surrounding air.”

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/27677-penguins-wear-a-shield-of-cold-air-in-winter.html