A mysterious gray whale sighted off the coast of Israel in the Mediterranean Sea has been seen again off the north east coast of Spain. The second sighting, made 23 days and 3000km after the first, has continued to perplex whale experts. Gray whales were thought to be extinct across the Atlantic Ocean, so the appearance of an individual within the Mediterranean Sea was a major surprise. Now it is not clear where the whale is heading or why. Once, three major populations of gray (also spelt grey) whale existed: in the western and eastern North Pacific Ocean, and in the North Atlantic. However, the North Atlantic population of gray whale became extinct sometime in the 17th or 18th Century, for reasons that are not clear. No sightings of the species had been made in the Atlantic Ocean since....

The ancestors of modern squid may have existed half a billion years ago - a lot earlier than previously thought. In a new study, Canadian researchers identified a previously unclassifiable fossil that was long believed to belong perhaps to the shrimp family. They called it Nectocaris pteryx - a small soft-bodied cephalopod with two tentacles rather than the eight or 10 seen in today's octopuses. The new survey's results were presented in the journal Nature. The findings make the ancestors of modern squid and octopuses at least 30 million years older. Evolutionary biologist Martin Smith, the main author of the study, told PA news agency that the findings bring cephalopods much closer to the first appearance of complex animals. "We go from very simple pre-Cambrian life-forms to...

The rapid decline of mammoths and other megafauna after humans spread across the New World may explain a bone-chilling plunge in global temperatures some 12,800 years ago, researchers reported Sunday. The 100-odd species of grass-eating giants that once crowded the North American landscape released huge quantities of methane -- from both ends of their digestive tracks. As a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, methane is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2). It was not enough to trigger runaway global warming. But when all that gaseous output suddenly tapered off, it caused or at least contributed to a prolonged freeze known as the Younger Dryas cold event, they argue. If so, the "Anthropocene epoch" - the era of major human impacts on Earth's climate system - began not...

Deep in the Mediterranean, scientists have discovered the first complex animals known to live without oxygen. It was previously thought that only viruses and single-celled microbes could survive without oxygen long-term. But three new species of multicellular animals found during recent research expeditions live comfortably in oxygen-free depths, said team leader Roberto Danovaro of Italy's Polytechnic University of Marche. "The bodies of multicellular animals have previously been discovered [in oxygen-free zones] but were thought to have sunk there from upper, oxygenated waters," Danovaro said in a statement. "Our results indicate that the animals we recovered were alive. Some, in fact, also contained eggs." The new animals are microscopic—each measuring less...

A new species of giant lizard has been discovered in the Philippines. The 2m-long reptile is a monitor lizard, the group to which the world's longest and largest lizards belong. The monitor, described as spectacular by the scientists who found it, lives in forests covering the Sierra Madre mountains in the north of the country. The striking reptile has bright yellow, blue and green skin, and survives on a diet of just fruit, yet until now it has escaped the eyes of biologists. "It is an incredible animal," says Dr Rafe Brown, one of the scientists who describe the new lizard in the journal Biology Letters. In the journal, the researchers describe how rare it is to find such a large terrestrial animal new to science.

A submarine exploring the ocean's depths recently returned with an unexpected visitor: a crablike critter that has left many readers startled and horrified. In a posting to social bookmarking site Reddit, a deep-sea technician detailed the finding, asking the site's readers to help identify what exactly the bizarre looking creature was. The post reads, "I work for a Sub-sea Survey Company, recently this beast came up attached to one of our ROVs. It measures a wee bit over 2.5 feet head to tail, and we expect it latched onto the ROV at roughly 8,500 feet depth. Unfortunately, the e-mail that these pictures were attached to came from a contractor, and the ship he was operating from (and therefore location) is unknown, so I can't tell you what part of the Earth this beast...

The vampire squid can turn itself "inside out" to avoid predators. Vampyroteuthis infernalis is a type of living fossil, meaning that it has seen very little change since it first appeared, before dinosaurs, about 300 million years ago. The vampire squid has 8 long arms, and a long curly strand that serves as a sensory filament. It has very large eyes, because it lives about a half a mile deep in the ocean, where the light is very dim. It has a unique ability to react when it is startled. It can curl its web and arms around the rest of its body—turning sort of ‘inside out.’ This change in appearance may help it avoid being attacked by predators.

These cephalopods --they’re technically not squids-- live in the deep ocean with millions of other...

Researchers hypothesize that a miles-long crack in the Ethiopian desert may eventually become an ocean. A new study from the journal Geophysical Research Letters reports that a 20-foot wide crack in the center of the Ethiopian desert will eventually become a new ocean. In a recently released study, scientists revealed how a rift from a volcanic eruption tore open a 35-mile crack in just days, reports MNN.The 60-kilometre (35-mile) split in the desolate Afar region, which was the result of two volcanic eruptions in September 2005, has enabled scientists to further examine the earth's tectonic movements, said a report published in the Geophysical Research Letters.

"The significance of the finding is that a huge magnetic deformation can happen within a few days like in...

Spider webs encased in amber which were discovered on an East Sussex beach have been confirmed by scientists as being the world's oldest on record. The amber, which was found in Bexhill by fossil hunter Jamie Hiscocks and his brother Jonathan, dates back 140 million years to the Cretaceous period. Professor Martin Brasier said they were the earliest webs to be incorporated into the fossil record. He has published his findings in the Journal of the Geological Society.

Professor Brasier, who is a palaeobiologist at the University of Oxford, said: "This amber is very rare. It comes from the very base of the Cretaceous, which makes it one of the oldest ambers anywhere to have inclusions in it." He added: "These spiders are distinctive and leave little sticky...

A massive pod of up to 50 killer whales has been filmed for the first time off the coast of Scotland by a BBC crew. Gordon Buchanan, presenter of BBC Autumnwatch, filmed the group from a fishing boat in the North Sea. The killer whales are filmed approaching the fishing boat and feeding on mackerel that escape the fishing nets. The tenacious behaviour reveals an unlikely alliance between fishermen and predators of fish.

Killer whales (Orcinus orca), otherwise called orcas, live in family groups called pods and occur in British waters. As the largest member of the dolphin family, killer whales are known for their intelligence and range of hunting behaviours. The pod of killer whales caught on camera belong to a family group that has developed a particular hunting strategy;...