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Mouthless ‘zombie worms’ use acid to drill into whale bones

A species of faceless, mouthless so-called zombie worm makes its home in the bones of whale skeletons on the ocean floor. According to Discovery.com, these worms use acid to bore into the bones, where they mate and feed on the nutrients inside. Osedax worms, which are the subject of a…

Oceanography professor: Mississippi river is the toilet of North America

Jeremy Jackson, Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, described the mouth of the Mississippi as “the bowl of the toilet of North America” during a speech at the California Academy of Sciences in September. He explained that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was only one…

Global warming: New study challenges carbon benchmark

The ability of forests, plants and soil to suck carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air has been under-estimated, according to a study on Wednesday that challenges a benchmark for calculating the greenhouse-gas problem. Like the sea, the land is a carbon “sink”, or sponge, helping to absorb heat-trapping CO2 disgorged by the…