At a meeting November 11, researchers involved in the “the Census of Marine Life” will unveil what one oceanographer is calling “a scientific achievement of historic proportions,” hundreds of new species identified in the world’s deepest oceans.
One discovery: “A large proportion of deep sea octopus species worldwide evolved from common ancestor species that still exist in the Southern Ocean (bottom left). Octopuses started migrating to new ocean basins more than 30 million years ago when, as Antarctica cooled and a large icesheet grew, nature created a ‘thermohaline expressway,’ a northbound flow of tasty frigid water with high salt and oxygen content. Isolated in new habitat conditions, many different species evolved; some octopuses, for example, losing their defensive ink sacs — pointless at perpetually dark depths.”
And just for fun, my all-time favorite Octopus clip, AFTER THE JUMP…
