microrobert
08-18-2013, 01:46 PM
Tiny sea creature devours whole whale skeletons
They're the tiny recyclers of the ocean floor -- voracious, pink-plumed worms that devour entire whale skeletons, then scatter their eggs to the current in hopes that offspring will find new bones.
The creatures, which were first discovered off California in 2002, in waters more than 1.5 miles deep, are so alien that biologists weren't sure initially that they were worms. They lack mouths and stomachs and the male worms are so tiny they spend their lives living inside the larger females.
And, as if that weren't exotic enough, scientists named one variety of worm Osedax mucofloris, or "snot-flower bone-eater"
Now, in a study (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1768/20131390.full) published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/), scientists have identified two new species of Osedax in the ocean depths off Antarctica.
Tiny sea creature devours whole whale skeletons - latimes.com (http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-tiny-sea-creature-devours-whale-skeletons-20130814,0,683215.story)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvrd8IH9scc
They're the tiny recyclers of the ocean floor -- voracious, pink-plumed worms that devour entire whale skeletons, then scatter their eggs to the current in hopes that offspring will find new bones.
The creatures, which were first discovered off California in 2002, in waters more than 1.5 miles deep, are so alien that biologists weren't sure initially that they were worms. They lack mouths and stomachs and the male worms are so tiny they spend their lives living inside the larger females.
And, as if that weren't exotic enough, scientists named one variety of worm Osedax mucofloris, or "snot-flower bone-eater"
Now, in a study (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1768/20131390.full) published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/), scientists have identified two new species of Osedax in the ocean depths off Antarctica.
Tiny sea creature devours whole whale skeletons - latimes.com (http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-tiny-sea-creature-devours-whale-skeletons-20130814,0,683215.story)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvrd8IH9scc