A broad study of cephalopods - more commonly known as octopuses, cuttlefish and squid - has shown that they all possessed toxic proteins that performed functions such as paralysing the nervous system of prey.

The scientists analysed tissue samples from cephalopods from Hong Kong, the Coral Sea, the Great Barrier Reef and Antarctica.

The different species' genes were then studied for venom protection and it was found that a venomous ancestor produced one set of venom proteins, but over time additional proteins had added to the chemical arsenal.

It's been a busy few years for Marine Quest, run by father and son team Jim and Iain Easingwood, and their latest find- the German U-Boat, U-40, is arguably their most impressive find yet.

A black deepsea coral found about 400 meters from Oahu and the Big Island in Hawaii is more than 4,000 years old — making it the oldest marine organism ever found, according to researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Using a manned deep-sea research submersible samples were collected at the Makapuu and Lanikai deep-sea coral beds off the coast of Oahu, Keahole Point deep-sea coral bed off the coast of the Big Island and Cross Seamount about 100 miles south of Oahu.

A new 4-million-year-old fossil from Peru described in this month’s issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology provides important evidence suggesting the shark’s origins may be more humble than previously believed.

Shark fossils very rare

Dana Ehret, Gordon Hubbell and Bruce MacFadden studied an exceptionally well-preserved fossil of a species of white shark (Carcharodon sp.) from Peru (estimated to be about 5 m long by the authors), consisting of a complete jaw with 222 teeth, and 45 vertebrae, in their paper.