GHOSTMAN

Sunday, 9 July 2017

Extremely rare seahorse discovered off coast of Devon

An extremely rare breed of seahorse has been found in British waters.

The Short Snouted Seahorse – scientific name Hippocampus Hippocampus – was found by experts off the coast of Devon.

Its native habitat is the south west waters but there has been a sharp decline in sightings and it is currently endangered.

It is now normally found in the Mediterranean and grows to between 7cm and 13cm long.

Mark Parry, community Seagrass initiative project manager at the National Marine Aquarium, said: “It is with great excitement that we are able to announce our first seahorse sighting within one of our seagrass surveys.

“Our volunteer divers even managed to capture photos of the beautiful animal.-read more

A grave mistake about Dick Turpin! Historian who has written a book on the highwayman claims it is unlikely his body is under his headstone

The headstone of ‘John Palmer otherwise Richard Turpin the notorious highwayman and horse stealer’ who was ‘executed’ on 7th April 1739 is a fake

Even for a city steeped in history, the colourful story of Dick Turpin’s death and burial in York is a genuine highlight.

But the thousands of tourists who have visited the highwayman’s last resting place and taken photos of his inscribed gravestone, were doing so under false pretences it has been claimed.

For new research by the country’s leading expert, Professor James Sharpe, has concluded that the headstone of ‘John Palmer otherwise Richard Turpin the notorious highwayman and horse stealer’ who was ‘executed’ on 7th April 1739 is a fake.

SORT OF A GARDENER.

I do not consider i have what is termed as green fingers but i like to do a bit of gardening .I got into gardening when i started as an volunteer down at Westward Ho Devon at a place known as Happy Cafe .It was their i learned about planting,maintenance of garden areas and much more and i am proud of all the hard work i and other volunteers got the garden and surrounding areas to a great standard .I carry on doing a bit of gardening at home but i do not know latin names and i am a bit of a bung it in and hope for the best and i am fond of garden ornaments 1 have over 15 in front garden alone,sad a.

Why frogs thrived after the dinosaurs were wiped out

Frogs around the world should be grateful for the forces that wiped out dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

That's according to new research from scientists in the United States and China that suggests whatever caused the mass extinction paved the way for the proliferation of frogs.

While frogs have been around for more than 200 million years, new research suggests that three main modern frog lineages — about 88 per cent of the living species of frogs — began to thrive shortly after the extinction event that signalled the end of all non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period.

While we know that about 80 per cent of the world's species were killed off in the mass extinction, what's not known is whether that extended to frogs, as there are few fossilized remains that have been found.

However, the researchers of this new study say that whether or not many frog species became extinct, the event gave rise to the frogs we know today.

"Maybe there was some extinction that happened there," says David Blackburn, co-author of the paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

"At the very least, what happened afterwards was that it seems like there must have been rapid diversification, where we had many new lineages evolve," said Blackburn, who is also associate curator of amphibians and reptiles at the Florida Museum of Natural History.-read more

GIFTS IN SPACE.

N.A.S.A are teaming up with couier DHL to deliver capsules half an inch in size to the moon.This service will cost you 353 pounds so you can leave tiny gifts for future generations.

Why Are These Male Fish Growing Eggs?

—Silver maples, lanky and bare, stand on the frozen flood plain at the Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge. Two sets of tracks—fox and mouse—weave across the snowy surface of the river, which is home to bass, muskrats, and beavers. In the fall, more than 20,000 migrating ducks will converge here, and in the summer, one of the refuge’s rarest species, spiny softshell turtles, will bask and forage on its gravelly beaches and sandbars.-Sixty miles south of Montreal, near the U.S.-Canada border, Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge is one of the most productive and pristine wetland ecosystems in the Northeast. Yet even here, scientists have found an abundance of fish with bizarre abnormalities that suggest exposure to hormone-disrupting water pollution.

Scientists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey studied fish in 19 national wildlife refuges in the U.S. Northeast, including Missisquoi. Their conclusion: An astonishing 60 to 100 percent of all the male smallmouth bass they examined had female egg cells growing in their testes.

Scientists call this condition intersex, and while its exact causes are unknown, it’s been linked to manmade, environmental chemicals that mimic or block sex hormones.

Over the past decade, feminized male fish have been discovered in 37 species in lakes and rivers throughout North America, Europe, and other -read more