A “dirty blizzard” bombarded the Gulf of Mexico seafloor with pollution from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill for months after workers sealed the leak, new research shows. Marine snow, an organic material that floats down from the ocean’s upper layers, carried the pollution to the seafloor, researchers report the week of May 30 in […]

On December 3, 2000, at Cape Shirreff, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, a female Antarctic fur seal experienced a personal tragedy: She gave birth to a dead male pup. For the next day or so, the seal, numbered “12” by scientists watching her group, nuzzled her baby and vocalized to him. Nearby on […]

The link between pollinator problems and neonicotinoids, a group of agricultural pesticides commonly associated with declines in honeybees, continues to build with two new studies published this week. Butterflies of Northern California join the ranks of honeybees, bumblebees, moths and other organisms that may be feeling the effects of the infamous insecticides. Butterfly species in […]

A few Tasmanian devils have started a resistance movement against a contagious cancer that has depleted their numbers. Since devil facial tumor disease was first discovered in 1996, it has wiped out about 80 percent of the Tasmanian devil population. In some places, up to 95 percent of devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) have succumbed to facial […]

It’s official: The southern tidewater goby is a thing. And it’s chubbier and nubbier than its northern cousin. Endangered tidewater gobies live in California’s seaside lagoons. Ranging roughly the entire length of the state, the fish used to be considered one species. But a new study confirms that gobies living in Northern and Southern California […]

Jeremy Freeman loves clean, simple lines. To see his bent toward aesthetic minimalism, you need look no further than his spare, calm website that slowly shifts colors. In the past, this fixation with style has occasionally veered toward the extreme. In graduate school at New York University, “he decided that capital letters were ugly,” says […]

Jupiter’s moon Europa might once again be venting water into space, further supporting the idea that an ocean hides beneath its thick shell of ice, researchers reported September 26 at a news conference. Plumes erupting from the moon’s surface, silhouetted against background light from Jupiter, appear in several images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope […]

PASADENA, Calif. — Jupiter’s clouds have deep roots. The multicolored bands that wrap around the planet reach hundreds of kilometers down into the atmosphere, NASA’s Juno spacecraft reveals, providing an unprecedented peek into the giant planet’s interior. “Whatever’s making those colors and stripes still exists pretty far down,” planetary scientist Scott Bolton, head of the […]

A bizarre new birdlike dino was part of an evolutionary extravaganza at the end of the age of dinosaurs. And it was a real stick-in-the-mud, too. Construction workers blasted Tongtianlong limosus out of the Earth near Ganzhou in southern China. “They very nearly blew this thing to smithereens,” says paleontologist Stephen Brusatte of the University […]

Narrow channels of moisture snaking through the atmosphere can bring storms that wreck beachfront bungalows — and leave oyster beds bare. Several of these channels, called atmospheric rivers (SN: 2/26/11, p. 20), dumped particularly heavy storms on California in early 2011. The resulting freshwater influx probably left part of the San Francisco Bay without enough […]