The Curious Case of the Deep-Sea Bone Worms and the Vanishing Underwater Gator

Date: January 29, 2020

Source: Atlas Obscura
Author: Sabrina Imbler

Scientists dropped three alligators to the bottom of the ocean. One of them was never seen again.

ABOUT A YEAR AGO, SCIENTISTS dumped three dead, frozen alligators into the ocean from a ship in Louisiana. They sank a little over a mile before making contact with the seafloor. Scientists have revisited the sunken reptiles several times since. One gator’s status is unknown, one gator has been slowly devoured by a new species of bone-eating worm, and one gator mysterious vanished—eaten or carried off whole by some enormous creature of the deep. “That one genuinely surprised us,” says Clifton Nunnally, a research scientist at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. “There was not a single scale or scute left of that gator.”

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Posted on Categories General Science