All told a dozen previously unknown peaks were discovered beneath the waves—some up to 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) tall, according to the British Antarctic Survey.
The volcanoes were found near the U.K. territories of the South Georgia Islands and South Sandwich Islands.
Read about it here in Nat Geo: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/07/110715-undersea-volcanoes-antarctica-science-tsunamis/?source=email_gg
The first wild mountain lion confirmed in Connecticut in 100 years traveled more than 1500 miles from the Black Hills of South Dakota, “one of the longest movements ever recorded for a land mammal and nearly double the distance ever recorded for a dispersing mountain lion,” said Connecticut Commissioner Daniel C. Esty.
The mountain lion was killed when a car struck it in Milford, Connecticut, on June 11. The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said genetic tests proved the animal’s origin. Connecticut has no native population of mountain lions.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service Wildlife Genetic Laboratory in Missoula, Montana, matched DNA taken from droppings, blood and hair found at the location of mountain lion sightings in Minnesota and Wisconsin in 2009 and 2010 with DNA taken from the Milford animal, Connecticut authorities reported. Other mountain lion sightings in Minnesota and Wisconsin as well as Michigan are believed to be of the same animal, authorities said.
Thanks to the ‘Roostah from Woostah’ for bringing this to the It’s Interesting community.
Tales of this creature in the Pacific with a long neck, a horse-like head, large eyes, and back bumps that stick out of the water have been around for over 200 years. Here is the most recent sighting in Alaska.
Read about it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/20/alaska-loch-ness-monster_n_904658.html?view=print
and here: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/loch-ness-monster-alasaka-204906638.html
Thanks to Mr. P Cuomo for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.
All living polar bears can trace their genetic lineage back to a single, female ancestor — a brown bear from Ireland, who lived around 20,000 to 50,000 years ago.
Thanks to climate change in the North Atlantic ice sheets around the time of the last ice age, the two types of bears would have periodically overlapped. In Ireland, it appears that they interbred, leading to a hybridization event that plopped maternal DNA from brown bears into polar bears.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/polar-bears-origins/
Some of the fish in New York’s Hudson River have evolved resistance to several of the waterway’s toxic pollutants. Instead of getting sick from dioxins and related compounds including some polychlorinated biphenyls, Atlantic tomcod harmlessly store these poisons in fat. However, it may not be so good for the higher-ups in the food chain.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/fish-toxins-environment/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/fish-toxins-environment/
Victoria Falls is a waterfall in southern Africa situated between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The falls are 108 meters high and 1,708 meters wide – the largest curtain of water in the world. The falls drop between 90m and 107m into the Zambezi Gorge, wiht an average of 550,000 cubic metres of water plummeting over the edge every minute.
Interestingly there is a spot known as the “Devil’s Swimming Pool”. During the months of September to December, people can swim as close as possible to the edge of the falls without falling over.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu5nlu4IBN8&feature=related]
Orlando Sentinel photographer Jacob Langston was out in the waters of New Smyrna Beach, Florida, making a video of a surfer when another surfer exclaimed, “Dude! Did you see that?!”
Langston’s focus was on his subject in the foreground of his camera — so he didn’t initially see the four-foot spinner shark jumping over another surfer in the water.
It wasn’t until he got back in the office and was editing his video that he realized he had captured the awesome moment in the background.
Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus is emerging as the most habitable spot beyond Earth in the Solar System for life as we know it.
“It has liquid water, organic carbon, nitrogen [in the form of ammonia], and an energy source,” says Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Besides Earth, he says, “there is no other environment in the Solar System where we can make all those claims.”
NASA is planning to send probes to Enceladus to search for life.
The fastest way to get a mission there is via a gravity boost from Jupiter, which would cut the journey time from ten years to as little as seven.
The next Jupiter-assist window hits its peak in 2015-17, and then slams shut until the 2030s.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/24/scientists-saturn-moon-could-support-life/?&hpt=hp_c2
A black bear that was perched high in a tree in Metuchen most of the day has come down to the ground and is now on the run, according to the homeowner whose backyard served as a temporary home to the bear.
The young black bear was stretched out on tree branch about 75 feet above the ground in a backyard on West Chestnut Avenue until a few minutes ago, causing quite a stir in the quiet residential neighborhood.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/06/black_bear_in_metuchen_out_of.html
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