What could be the world’s rarest coral has been discovered in the remote North Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific elkhorn coral (Acropora rotumana) — with branches like an elk’s antlers — was found during an underwater survey of the Arno atoll in the Marshall Islands.

MSNBC

An octopus that uses coconut shells as portable armor is the latest addition to a growing list of animals that use tools.

LiveScience

The potential for future rapid sea-level rise is perhaps the greatest threat from global warming. But the question of whether recent ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica is the first indication of such a rise is difficult to answer given the limited duration of the instrumental record. New evidence from an exceptionally exposed fossil reef in the Xcaret theme park in Mexico provides a detailed picture of the development of reef terraces, erosion surfaces and sea-level excursions in the region during the last interglacial. A combination of precise uranium-series dating and stratigraphic analysis, together with comparison with coral ages elsewhere, suggests that a sea-level jump of 2 to 3 metres occurred about 121,000 years ago, consistent with an episode of ice-sheet instability towards the end of the last interglacial. On that evidence, sustained rapid ice loss and sea-level rise in the near future are possible.

MSNBC

MSNBC