“Based on the numbers that have been reported, the population seems to be pretty healthy,” Collins says. “I do not think this is something that people should be overly alarmed about,” he adds. “They are not large. Their bell is only about a centimeter. There aren’t any reports of them causing bad stings to swimmers, but the venom has not been specifically studied.”

Image right: The box jellyfish Tripedalia cystophora. (Photo by Jan Bielecki)

With the gradual warming of the oceans a number of marine species from the Caribbean have been observed moving into areas of the southern and mid-Atlantic coasts of the United States. “We’re seeing this happening everywhere all over the planet. Species ranges are changing because of human activities,” Collins says. “In general, it’s another symptom of a changing world.”

Image right: Diagram of a box jellyfish from the paper “First report of the box jellyfish Tripekalia cystophora (Cubozoa: Tripedaliidae) in the continental USA, from Lake Wyman, Boca Radon, Florida” by Evan Orellana and Allen Collins.

Tripedalia cystophora has taken up residence in southern Florida’s red mangroves, which is “a really good habitat for larval fishes,” Collins explains. “So, they could be competing with larval fishes for food, or if the fish larvae are small enough, perhaps even eating them, but they specialize on copepods. This box jellyfish is probably here for good.”

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Moray eel. Moray eels are legendary predators on coral reefs. Note the second set of jaws in the “throat”; these are the gill arches, which are present in all fish. Gill arches support the gills, the major respiratory organ of fish.

Lookdown. Because of its sloped head and the enlarged crest on its skull, the Lookdown appears to “look down” as it swims. These fish often swim in small schools.

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Alligator Pipefish. Pipefish may be thought of as seahorses unfurled. The numerous bony body rings are used to differentiate one species of pipefish from another.

Ox-eyed Oreo. The name Oreosoma (“mountain body”) refers to the cone-shaped bony structures on the underside of this larval specimen. Adults are more elongate, less oval, and covered with scales.

Dhiho’s Seahorse. Just over one inch long, this elegant fish is readily identified as a seahorse by its characteristic head. The body ends in a tail that can curl around and hold on to algae or coral. This species is found only in the waters around Japan.

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Across the Atlantic Ice boldly challenges this old narrative and presents overwhelming evidence for a pre-Clovis occupation of the American continents, and finds virtually no direct evidence that the progenitors of Clovis came from Siberia. Evidence put forth in this new book overwhelmingly indicates southwestern Europe, specifically the Ice Age Solutrean Culture of France and Spain, as the source of the people that developed into the Clovis.

Drawing from original archaeological analysis, paleoclimatic research, and genetic studies, noted archaeologists Dennis J. Stanford, of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Bruce A. Bradley, associate professor at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, apply rigorous scholarship to a hypothesis that places the technological antecedents of Clovis in Europe. Their research indicates that the first Americans crossed the Atlantic by boat and arrived earlier than previously thought.

Supplying archaeological and oceanographic evidence to support these assertions, the book dismantles the old paradigms while persuasively linking Clovis technology with the culture of the Solutrean people who occupied France and Spain more than 20,000 years ago.

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Hagfishes, known as slime eels or slime hags, are so named because of the huge amounts of mucus they produce. One disturbed hagfish can fill a 2-gallon bucket with slime in a matter of minutes. The slime makes them virtually inedible.

2

The eyes of the Four-eyed Fish are split in half horizontally, each having two pupils and a retina that is divided into top and bottom sections. It swims with half of its eye out of the water, searching for insects, and the other half looking down into the water.

3

African lungfish enclose themselves in a mud tunnel and, after their lake has dried up, can live for years buried in the mud, breathing air and waiting for the rains to return. The structure of their heart and lungs first tricked scientists into thinking the South American lungfish was a reptile, the African lungfish an amphibian.

4

Anemone fishes live in groups where the two largest fish only are sexually mature, the largest being female and the next largest male. If the female dies, the male changes sex to female and the next largest fish in the group matures to male. If the animated film “Finding Nemo,” had been true to life, Nemo’s dad, Marlin, should have become Nemo’s mother shortly after his original mother was eaten by a barracuda.

5

A few fishes specialize on, or at least supplement their diets with, the eyes of other fishes. A narrow-bodied cichlid in Africa’s Lake Malawi, the Malawi Eyebiter, does not make a good aquarium pet because of its eye-popping activities.

6

Peters Elephantfish is the only fish ever observed playing with objects. In captivity, these fish will repeatedly take a small ball of aluminum foil and carry it to the outflow tube of an aquarium filter so the ball is pushed across the tank by the water current.

7

Most fish are countershaded: darker on top, gradually lighter or silver on their sides and brightest on their bellies. Seen from above, beside or below, this pattern makes them less visible in the water column against the background color of the water.

8

The cusk eels are the world’s deepest living family of fishes. One was netted with a bottom trawl in the Puerto Rico Trench at a depth of 27,500 feet. At such a depth a fish would experience a pressure of  approximately 12,000 pounds per square inch.

9

As they sleep (and fish do sleep), parrotfishes and wrasses secrete a mucous cocoon around themselves at night, perhaps to thwart the highly-developed senses of moray eels and blood-sucking parasitic invertebrates.

10

Menhaden, the fishes the Indians taught the Pilgrims to plant with their corn, today rank as America’s most important fishes. Menhaden oil is used in cosmetics, linoleum, health food supplements, margarine, soap, insecticides and paints. Their pulverized bodies end up as feed for cats, dogs, poultry and pigs.

All fish facts are from the new book Fishes: The Animal Answer Guide, by Bruce Collette, National Systematics Laboratory,  Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History; and Gene Helfman, University of Georgia.

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Image right: The hand print of a baby dinosaur from the nesting site in South Africa. (Images courtesy University of the Witwatersrand)

A new study, entitled Oldest known dinosaur nesting site and reproductive biology of the Early Jurassic sauropodomorph Massospondylus and published in the international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by Canadian palaeontologist Robert Reisz, a professor of biology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, and co-authored by Hans-Dieter Sues of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History; Eric Roberts of James Cook University, Australia; and Adam Yates of the Bernard Price Institute for Paleontological Research.

The study reveals clutches of eggs, many with embryos, as well as tiny dinosaur footprints, providing the oldest known evidence that the hatchlings remained at the nesting site long enough to at least double in size.

The authors say the newly unearthed dinosaur nesting ground is more than 100 million years older than previously known nesting sites.

Image left: A fossil from the nesting site showing seven eggs, some with the embryos exposed.

At least 10 nests have been discovered at several levels at this site, each with up to 34 round eggs in tightly clustered clutches. The distribution of the nests in the sediments indicate that these early dinosaurs returned repeatedly (nesting site fidelity) to this site, and likely assembled in groups (colonial nesting) to lay their eggs, the oldest known evidence of such behavior in the fossil record.

The large size of the mother, at six meters in length, the small size of the eggs, about six to seven centimetrs in diameter, and the highly organized nature of the nest, suggest that the mother may have arranged them carefully after she laid them.

“The eggs, embryos, and nests come from the rocks of a nearly vertical road cut only 25 meters long,” Reisz says. “Even so, we found ten nests, suggesting that there are a lot more nests in the cliff, still covered by tons of rock. We predict that many more nests will be eroded out in time, as natural weathering processes continue.”

Image right: A nest of dinosaur eggs from the South African nesting site.

The fossils were found in sedimentary rocks from the Early Jurassic Period in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in South Africa. This site has previously yielded the oldest known embryos belonging to Massospondylus, a relative of the giant, long-necked sauropods of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

“This amazing series of 190 million year old nests gives us the first detailed look at dinosaur reproduction early in their evolutionary history, and documents the antiquity of nesting strategies that are only known much later in the dinosaur record,” says Evans.

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Image right: These ancient corn cobs date roughly from 6,500-4,000 years ago. A is Proto-Confite Morocho race; B, Confite Chavinense maize race; and C is Proto-Alazan maize race.. (Photo by Tom Dillehay)

Some of the oldest known corncobs, husks, stalks and tassels, dating from 6,700 to 3,000 years ago were found at Paredones and Huaca Prieta, two mound sites on Peru’s arid northern coast. The research group, led by Tom Dillehay from Vanderbilt University and Duccio Bonavia from Peru’s Academia Nacional de la Historia, also found corn microfossils: starch grains and phytoliths. Characteristics of the cobs—the earliest ever discovered in South America—indicate that the sites’ ancient inhabitants ate corn several ways, including popcorn and flour corn. However, corn was still not an important part of their diet.

Image left: Wild forms of Zea mays are called ‘teosinte’. Over time, selective breeding modifies teosinte’s few fruitcases (left) into modern corn’s rows of exposed kernels (right). (Photo courtesy John Doebley.).

“Corn was first domesticated in Mexico nearly 9,000 years ago from a wild grass called teosinte,” Piperno says. “Our results show that only a few thousand years later corn arrived in South America where its evolution into different varieties that are now common in the Andean region began. This evidence further indicates that in many areas corn arrived before pots did and that early experimentation with corn as a food was not dependent on the presence of pottery.”

Understanding the subtle transformations in the characteristics of cobs and kernels that led to the hundreds of maize races known today, as well as where and when each of them developed, is a challenge. Corncobs and kernels were not well preserved in the humid tropical forests between Central and South America, including Panama—the primary dispersal routes for the crop after it first left Mexico about 8,000 years ago.

“These new and unique races of corn may have developed quickly in South America, where there was no chance that they would continue to be pollinated by wild teosinte,” Piperno says. “Because there is so little data available from other places for this time period, the wealth of morphological information about the cobs and other corn remains at this early date is very important for understanding how corn became the crop we know today.”

“Preceramic corn from Pardones and Huaca Prieta, Peru,” Grobman, A., Bonavia, D., Dillehay, T.D., Piperno, D.R., Iriarte, J., Holst, I. 2012. . PNAS early online edition, week of Jan. 16, 2012.

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Image right: This NASA satellite image, acquired Jan. 7, 2012, shows the recent eruption in the Red Sea that has risen completely above water. Click image to enlarge.

Q: Geologically what is going on in these photographs?

A: The new island visible in the satellite photograph is the top of a giant shield volcano located on the rift axis in the Red Sea where the continental plates of Africa and Arabia are pulling apart. As these massive continental plates pull apart volcanic magma forcibly pushes its way up through the fissure and into the Red Sea. This new island emerged above water atop the shield volcano in a cluster of 10 islands called the Zubair Group. Each island represents a different vent area of the volcano and each one, during thousands of years, has been built up from the shield’s summit area, some 325 feet below sea level.

This video shows the new island erupting in the Red Sea.

The “new” volcano, of which you can see the very top, has probably been erupting episodically underwater for thousands of years. While its above-surface dimensions are roughly 1,739 feet east-to-west and 2,329 feet north-to-south we know the larger submerged shield it sits on is about 12.5 miles across—an edifice whose age is unknown, but the Red Sea may have begun spreading apart about 34 million years ago and the shield volcano could thus be tens of millions of years in the making.

Now that this recently active vent has emerged from the sea to make dry land, the eruption has excited media interest and people have begun to hear about it.

Image right: Satellite images showing the Red Sea region where the volcanic island recently appeared before (top) and after.

Q: What are the dangers of being near this newly forming island?

A: It is not implausible that the edifice could fail and cause a tsunami. The aviation community hasn’t reported big plumes of smoke and ash and the maritime community hasn’t reported a lot of floating pumice. The likelihood is that this eruption is kind of local, not too energetic and of little hazard to marine navigation. Lava is probably being spattered at 164 to 325 feet. Most of its activity has been hidden underwater. Now that it has switched from a submarine eruption to an above water eruption, its style of erupting may change….perhaps to some beautiful spray eruptions.

Keep in mind that this whole region has had many volcanic eruptions in the last five years. In 2007, for example, a sudden eruption on the nearby Island Jebel at Tair killed a number of soldiers stationed there. The process of plate tectonics seems to be going on a little faster, at a quickened rate in this area. Why? We don’t know. The general public needs to be reminded that volcanologists are often in the dark about these processes.

Q: What can we expect to see in the next few months from this volcanic island?

A: The supply of magma supplied by the rift axis seems to be a stop-and-go process and repose of these volcanoes is a lot longer than their eruptive phase. Often in the case of submarine volcanoes they wash away in about a year from ocean currents, wind and storms. Also volcanic islands often sink due to a process we don’t understand very well. A lot of volcanoes on the sea floor are flat topped—as they were sinking, it is as if the waves chopped off their tops–gave them a haircut. So this may happen as well.

Other islands in the group clearly have explosion craters of various sizes so it’s possible that before any sinking or washing away occurs, we could see more energetic explosions. Today’s activity may be as energetic as it will get or it may transition to more effusive behavior as the vent is further sheltered from the sea surface.

There’s a lot more up and down to these submarine volcanoes than meets the eye. They may have quite enigmatic lava flows of 70 to 100 miles but the flows are spread out and over time they built up like a stack of pancakes. They are not formed in a central mound like inland volcanoes are.

(Richard Wunderman is managing editor of the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network. To read a just-published report on this new volcanic eruption click this link to the Global Volcanism Program Volcanic Activity Reports and click PDF File.)

Satellite images originally published by NASA Earth Observatory.

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Ichthyologists Gene Helfman, professor emeritus at the University of Georgia, and Bruce Collette, of the Division of Fishes at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, provide accurate, entertaining, and sometimes surprising answers to more than 100 common and not-so-common questions, such as “Can fishes breathe air?” “How smart are fishes?” and “Do fishes feel pain?”

They explain how bony fishes evolved, the relationship between fishes and sharks, and why there is so much color variation among species. Along the way we also learn about the devils hole pupfish, which has the smallest range of any vertebrate in the world; “Lota lota,” the only freshwater fish to spawn under ice; the Candiru, a pencil-thin Amazonian catfish that lodges itself in a very personal place on male bathers and must be removed surgically; and many other curiosities.

With more than 100 photographs—including two full-color photo galleries—and the most up-to-date facts on the world’s fishes from two premier experts, this fun, accessible, and informative book is the perfect bait for any curious naturalist, angler, or aquarist.

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As a coastal archaeologist and expert in prehistoric and historic settlement sites in the Chesapeake Bay region, Darrin Lowery of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and University of Delaware, is carefully watching the effects of coastal erosion and rising sea levels on coastal archaeological sites. As sea levels creep slowly upward, scores of these sites are slipping under water and becoming more difficult, if not impossible, to excavate and study.

Image right: Darrin Lowery examines soils and peat marsh for evidence of ancient landscapes and sea level rise on the Mockhorn Island in Virginia. (Photo by Mike Hardesty, Washington College)

Of equal concern, says Lowery, are the chemical processes that accompany rising seas, which can modify and deteriorate the stone tools that early Americans used to hunt and prepare food and clothing hundreds of years ago. Lowery is co-author of a recent paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science on the geochemical impacts to prehistoric artifacts in coastal zones. He recently answered a few questions about his work.

Q. How do the chemical processes of sea level rise affect primitive stone tools?

A. Slowly rising sea levels result in the regular input of sediment and organic matter into low-lying areas, essentially creating areas covered in tidal marsh. Sulfidization in a tidal marsh is a process that reduces iron to its ferrous state and produces pyrite, turning stone artifacts black. A prehistoric projectile point made of jasper that has been exposed to sulfidization looks like it is made of a different type of stone called chert. This is a challenge to archaeologists because it is generally assumed that broad lithic categories can be distinguished between stone tools that are made of either chert or jasper. Over time this process can change the look of a stone artifact both inside and out.

Image left: Jasper (A) and chert (B) projectile points found at eroding shoreline sites in the Middle Atlantic. (Images courtesy Darrin Lowery)

A second process common in salt marshes is sulfuricization, which creates sulfuric acid. Highly corrosive, this acid attacks the silicate structure of a stone tool, first staining the rock with a reddish brown color and eventually causing the artifact to decompose. Having these artifacts disappear from the historic record is also of great concern to archaeologists. For a museum curator, safely storing iron-rich stone tools or artifacts that have been exposed to acid sulfate is problematic.

Q. Is sea level rise the only culprit in these changes?

A. No. The widespread practice of dredging sediment from the bottom of estuaries or along the coast and using it to build up shorelines and create living coastlines and areas for housing developments can create a situation that results in a sulfuric-acid producing machine. Marine sediments that have been oxygen-starved for several millenia are dredged up, brought to the surface and exposed to oxygen. Aerobic bacteria working on the sulfates in the sediments create sulfuric acid, as well as a series of iron oxides. If the acid is dissolving silica in iron-rich prehistoric stone tools from archaeological sites on the coast, as I have witnessed, I can only imagine how it is impacting marine life in the area adjacent to the dredge spoils.

Image right: This freshly broken projectile point made of jasper reveals the gradual precipitation of pyrite into its core, a process that has dramatically changing its color.

Q. Can you determine how much sea levels have risen since prehistoric times in North America 1,000 years ago?

A. Humans don’t like to get their feet wet so we know that prehistoric coastal sites now underwater or buried in a tidal marsh were once terrestrial, and that people were once eating, sleeping and living on these spots. Because we know that some prehistoric settlement sites in the Chesapeake Bay area are situated beneath a meter of tidal marsh peat, we can use certain “known-age” iron-rich artifacts from these submerged coastal sites to assess rates of sea level rise, as well as the rates of acid sulfate chemical change. From this we can also gauge the accuracy of the reported sea level rise rates over the past few centuries.

Surveying a large number of drowned prehistoric sites gives us the opportunity to understand those rates and the reported magnitudes.

Q. Are your projects in the Chesapeake region only focused on prehistoric settlement sites?

A. With one of my research projects, I am trying to assess the reported historic rates of sea level rise using, in part, farm fields next to tidal marshes that were first plowed long ago. We have numerous detailed historic maps showing the topographically low tidal marsh areas around the Chesapeake Bay. These maps, which encompass the last 165 years, show many tilled upland hummocks surrounded by tidal marsh. Agriculturally mixed soils are a distinctive archaeological feature formed when the thin organic soil has been turned and thickened by the plow. Back in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, farmers in these low tidal marsh areas around the Chesapeake Bay didn’t have much land and they cleared every upland area right up to the edge of the marsh for cultivation. The 1840s and 1850s coastal survey maps clearly show the tilled field boundaries and historic structures on these upland hummocks.

Image left:  The chemical processes that accompany rising seas is evident on the two halves of this jasper biface projectile point. The top of this artifact was found along the eroded forested upland (B). The bottom part (C) was altered by geochemical processes in the eroded upland area surrounded by tidal marsh (D) where it was found.

I’m geo-referencing these historic maps and overlaying them with recent satellite images to form a single comparative map. By doing this I can see the historic distribution of plowed fields and farms in these low coastal areas and compare them with today. Fieldwork in these areas has allowed me to relocate the historic plowed or tilled field boundaries. Many of the shorelines have been eroded by the effects of wind and waves. However, the historic plowed fields have not been inundated or covered by tidal marsh peat over the past 150 years.

What I’ve observed is that sea levels in the Chesapeake Bay may have come up a little bit in the last 150 years but I don’t believe they have risen as much as one foot, as some groups are reporting. In all my years of shoreline surveys I have never seen a 17th, 18th, or 19th century domestic site beneath a covering of tidal marsh peat. I think people are mistaking shoreline erosion and land loss, caused by wind and water chewing away at unconsolidated terrestrial sediments, with sea level rise.

For example, currently at Kent Narrows in the Chesapeake, a series of hummocks above sea level appear as upland landscapes with the same dimensions on the earlier 1840s coastal maps. Also on the Chesapeake’s Hoopers Island are a series of hummocks that were being tilled in the 1840s, the plowed landscape features are still there adjacent to the marsh and above sea level. I have observed the same conditions on Messongo Creek on Virginia’s eastern shore.

If sea levels had risen as much as one foot over the past century, the aerial extent of these isolated upland landforms should have shrunk in size and the historic plow zones associated with the hummocks should have been covered or partially covered by expanding tidal marsh.

It is important to remember that sediment erosion along shorelines does not equate to sea level rise and sediment accretion along shorelines does not equate to a sea level fall. As an example, Sharp’s Island at the mouth of the Choptank River consisted of more than 700 acres of land in 1847, but by the mid-1950’s the island had completely eroded away. Meanwhile, in 1849, Fisherman’s Island at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay on Virginia’s eastern shore did not exist. Fisherman’s Island today consists of more than 1,800 acres of land and the island also has an extensive forested upland.

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