Shaped like a torpedo and about as swift, squids are jet-propelled underwater predators. But that was not always the case. The ancestors of today's squids, cuttlefish and octopuses were slow and heavily armored. A new genetic analysis of 26 present-day cephalopods shows that they began to appear 160 million to 100 million years ago, during the so-called Mesozoic Marine Revolution. Evolutionary pressures then favored being nimble over being armored, the team said. Losing their shells allowed the cephalopods to compete for fish, which were becoming faster, and to better evade predators.

Reusable foam could help clean up oil spills

Federal researchers have created a new tool to clean up oil spills by tinkering with the kind of foam found in seat cushions. The modified foam can soak up oil floating on water and lurking below the surface, and then can be repeatedly wrung out and reused, the researchers say. It "just bounces back like a kitchen sponge," said co-inventor Seth Darling, a scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. Modifying polyurethane foam for this purpose is not a new idea, but the Argonne researchers used a new procedure to coat the foam with a material that attracts oil but not water.

These elephants don't get much sleep

Researchers may have found the most sleepless land mammal on Earth. After observing a pair of African elephant matriarchs for more than a month, scientists found that the venerable pachyderms slept an average of just two hours per night, according to a new study in PLOS One. The researchers found that both were polyphasic sleepers, meaning they napped in several short bouts over the course of a night. But those naps were few and far between; at one point, the elephants went 46 hours without resting.

Calif. fault could cause magnitude-7.4 quake

An earthquake fault running from San Diego Bay to Los Angeles is capable of producing a magnitude-7.4 earthquake that could affect some of the region's most densely populated areas, according to a new study. The study looked at the Newport-Inglewood and Rose Canyon systems — previously thought to be separate — and concluded they actually form a continuous fault that runs underwater from San Diego Bay to Seal Beach in Orange County and on land through the Los Angeles basin. The fault poses a significant hazard to coastal Southern California and Tijuana, Mexico, according to the study.

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