Beautiful National Parks Seen From Space

Below are several examples from this gallery of national parks seen from space.  For additional information and pictures, see the original article.

Yellowstone National Park:

Kenai Fjords National Park:

Grand Canyon National Park:

Dolphins Blast Into School of Fish

Dolphins and gannets blast through a shimmering, pulsing vortex of fish known as "prey balls" in these up-close glimpses of an underwater buffet.

In a prey ball, tens or hundreds of thousands of fish cluster into a dense swarm, moving as a single entity. It’s not clear if they’re getting into this shape to reduce their chances of being eaten, or because dolphins are herding them to be in that shape.

Dolphins circled clockwise around prey balls — dolphins appear, like most humans, to favor their right sides — skimming bites off the edges rather than plunging straight in. Often two dolphins would attack at the same time, rather than individually. When prey balls tried to dive, dolphins herded them back up.

Original article here.

New Pacific eel is a 'living fossil', scientists say

A newly discovered eel that inhabits an undersea cave in the Pacific Ocean has been dubbed a "living fossil" because of its primitive features.

It is so distinct, scientists created a new taxonomic family to describe its relationship to other eels.

The scientific team say the eel's features suggest it has a long and independent evolutionary history stretching back 200 million years.

The animal used as the basis for the new study was an 18cm-long female, collected by one of the researchers during a dive at a 35m-deep cave in the Republic of Palau.

In order to classify the new animal, the researchers had to create a new family, genus and species, bestowing on the animal the latin name Protoanguilla palau.

The team's results suggest this new family has been evolving independently for the last 200 million years, placing their origins in the early Mesozoic era, when dinosaurs were beginning their domination of the planet.

The researchers say the Protoanguilla lineage must have once been more widely distributed, because the undersea ridge where its cave home is located is between 60 and 70 million years old.

See original article here.

Slow-Motion Chipmunk

Sea Turtle GPS Shows Ocean-Spanning Leatherback Buffet

The fact that leatherback turtles swim thousands of miles is driven home beautifully in this new map of their sophisticated, ocean-spanning movements.

Between 2000 and 2007, biologists attached GPS transmitters to 126 leatherbacks nesting in Indonesia, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. These individuals represent one of three remaining subpopulations of the endangered turtle, which can reach lengths of 6 feet and weigh more than 2,000 pounds.

The map resulting resulting from the transmissions shows creatures that don’t just drift in instinctive obedience to migratory impulse. The leatherbacks navigated in time with season and temperature and current, visiting eddies and boundaries and blooms.

See the original article here.