More than 30,000 teeth, bones and other fossils from a 249 million-year-old community of extinct marine reptiles, amphibians, bony fish and sharks have been discovered on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen. These record the earliest radiation of land-living animals into oceanic ecosystems following cataclysmic extinction and extreme global warming at the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs.

Drones and field surveys reveal how both natural features and human structures shape where loggerhead sea turtles nest on a busy South Florida beach. The team discovered turtles prefer steeper sands and areas away from dune stairs, while flatter spots or sites near stairs saw more false crawls – when turtles come ashore but don’t lay eggs. By linking beach features to nesting success, this study provides crucial insights for protecting Florida’s endangered sea turtle populations.

Melting sea ice in polar regions is transforming how the oceans move and mix. In a recent study, researchers used a high-resolution climate model to explore how rising CO₂ levels intensify ocean stirring. They found that sea ice loss strengthens currents and turbulence, particularly in the Arctic and Southern Oceans. Such changes are expected to substantially alter the transport of heat, carbon, and nutrient, ultimately affecting polar marine ecosystems under future climate conditions.

In a study published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences, researchers from Nanjing Normal University developed a unified mathematical model and a six-category classification system for coastal tipping points. By integrating land-sea interactions and multi-scale processes, the framework analyzes 91 global cases, highlighting spatial heterogeneity and urging advances in data fusion, modeling, and adaptive management to address irreversible shifts in these vulnerable systems.

In the summer of 2022, 20 islands in the Maldives were flooded when a distant swell event in the Indian Ocean coincided with an extremely high tide level. Now researchers from the University of Plymouth (UK) and Deltares, a not-for-profit applied research institute in the Netherlands, have warned that future predicted rises in sea levels - coupled with an increase in extreme weather events and wave conditions - could result in such flooding becoming far more common, perhaps happening every two to three years by around 2050.