On the Verge of Extinction, These Whales Are Also Shrinking
The few living North Atlantic right whales are smaller than previous generations, and some show signs of severely stunted development.
A North Atlantic right whale in Cape Cod Bay. The patterns on each whale’s head are unique, allowing scientists to identify each individual and keep track of them over time.Credit.John Durban and Holly Fearnbach
North Atlantic right whales are struggling to survive, and it shows.
Most of the 360 or so North Atlantic right whales alive today bear scars from entanglements in fishing gear and collisions with speeding ships and, according to a new study, they are much smaller than they should be.
Meet the Sea Slugs That Chop Off Their Heads and Grow New Bodies
Their severed heads get around just fine until they regenerate perfectly functioning, parasite-free new bodies, scientists say.
Video
A sea slug’s head moves around three days after the invertebrate decapitated itself from its body. The body, still alive, reacts slightly when touched by the head. Video by Sayaka Mitoh.Credit
By Annie Roth
A few years ago, Sayaka Mitoh, a Ph.D. candidate at Nara Women’s University in Japan, was perusing her lab’s vast collection of sea slugs when she stumbled upon a gruesome sight. One of the lab’s captive-raised sea slugs, an Elysia marginata
Finally in 3-D: A Dinosaurâs All-Purpose Orifice
This cloaca is more than 100 million years old, and it did a lot of work for this extinct species.
A reconstruction of Psittacosaurus showing how the cloacal vent might have been used for signaling during courtship.Credit.Bob Nicholls/Paleocreations.com 2020
Jan. 19, 2021
The worldâs oldest known all-purpose orifice sits in a fossil display case in the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, so close to the glass that enshrines it that you can âput your face up to it, like this,â said Jakob Vinther, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England, holding his hand a couple inches from his nose.