The 2,000-strong community of Census of Marine Life scientists from 82 nations has announced astonishing examples of recent new finds from the world’s ocean depths. Mollusk expert Patricia Miloslavich (Venezuela), Census co-senior scientist: “We are beginning to pull together a picture and clarify the complicated and interconnected global drivers of marine biodiversity patterns and changes, and we are starting to see the conservation-related implications and benefits, from the small coves of the near-shore to the vast abyss.”
Within their mandate “to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine life in the oceans – past, present, and future,” Census of Antarctic Marine Life scientists report the first molecular evidence that a large proportion of deep sea octopus species worldwide evolved from common ancestor species that still exist in the Southern Ocean.
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.
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Related articles on the web:
- Scientists uncover more marine species, clues to octopus origins
- Octopuses share ‘living ancestor’
- Cute Smiling Octopus
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