Brian Sharp, the stranding coordinator of the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Yarmouth Port, Mass .said the public had a sort of "C.S.I. crime scene" idea of how scientists worked, automatically assuming that the reasons for the marine mammals' deaths should be quickly apparent.
Initial reports by The Daily Mail attributed the mammals' deaths to the pulsating music at the techno gathering.
The results of this study – the first controlled taphonomic evaluation of species abundance and temporal resolution of large-mammal death assemblages in temperate settings – confirm and expand a source of biodiversity data important for both paleontologists and biologists.
Here, I expand the environmental sampling of large-mammal death assemblages into a temperate biome and explore more demanding assessments of ecological fidelity by testing their capacity to record past population fluctuations of individual species in the well-studied ungulate community of Yellowstone National Park Yellowstonee).
One fossil site in Chile revealed recurring mass marine-mammal deaths, most likely from toxic algae blooms, dating back at least nine million years.
In between bear sightings, the southeast Bronx, best known for tidy waterfront neighborhoods and convenient access to Queens, was the site of two more untimely mammal deaths.
Manmade noise like seismic testing for oil and natural gas with high-tech sonar equipment, is also thought to contribute to marine mammal deaths.
The study, which appears in tomorrow's Nature, is the first to establish an unequivocal link between algal blooms and mammal deaths, and it suggests the poisonous pathway can endanger humans, too.
Here we extend areas of concern to include the central California coast and document numerous marine mammal deaths due to microcystin intoxication.
