Tag Archives: Seafloor

Deep below the seafloor, locked in a layer of 100-million-year-old sediment, a lifeform quietly lives. It’s not quite Godzilla, nor a long-lost Megalodon, but it does go to show how life on Earth can dwell under the most extreme and bizarre circumstances. Scientists discovered that communities of microbes living beneath the seafloor are able to survive in rock sediments for …

Deep beneath the waves of the North Sea, the seafloor is behaving in an unexpected way. There, scientists have discovered hundreds of vast sand mounds, some on the scale of several kilometers across, that, according to a release from the University of Manchester in the UK, “defy fundamental geological principles”. These mounds pile atop structures known as sinkites, the result …

Eight Pacific sleeper sharks showed up for dinner when researchers dropped a cow carcass to the seafloor of the South China Sea at 5,344 feet (1,629 meters) near Hainan Island. The visit offered a rare observation of how these deep residents feed, wait, and make room for one another. The species is hard to study because it ranges …

Victoria Gill, Kate Stephens and Gwyndaf Hughes BBC News Science team Elisenda Balleste The researchers worked from a vessel at a number of locations around the Antarctic Peninsula Why would anyone brave hand-numbing cold, icy winds and rough seas – sometimes working through the night – to dig up mud from the Antarctic seabed? That is what an international team …

Study site Eqalorutsit Kangilliit Sermiat (EKaS; also known as Qajuuttap Sermia) is, to our knowledge, the only major Greenlandic tidewater outlet glacier that has continuously gained mass over the past three decades52. At the calving front, the Eqalorutsit Kangilliit fjord is 280–300 m deep and filled with sediments, resulting in a flat bathymetry across the fjord. At the eastern part of …

Scientists have mapped 332 Antarctic canyon networks to help assess the future course of climate breakdown. The research, published in the journal Marine Geology, shows in high resolution submarine valleys that can reach down more than 4,000 metres, more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon in the US. The resulting data shows that the canyons may have a …

A new study published in Science Advances is upending decades of scientific belief about the history of the Arctic. Contrary to the long-held theory that a massive, kilometer-thick ice shelf blanketed the Arctic Ocean during the coldest ice ages, new evidence suggests that the Arctic was never fully frozen. By analyzing ancient ocean mud and conducting advanced climate simulations, researchers …