Bizarre New Clam Species Found
Weird New Clam Diarmaid O'Foighil Scientists discovered the tiny clam crawling on California sea urchin spines. Its Linnaean name is Waldo, mostly for the sake of puns, I think. In the north Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Northern California, the Pacific Northwest, and British Columbia, the waters are cold and the animals are often large. Huge salmon and tuna, massive geoduck clams, thundering great white sharks, and 8-foot-long sea lions are common. But the newest species discovered is anything but: it's a bizarre, thin-shelled clam that's so small it lives among the spines of sea urchins. Two scientists, Paul Valentich-Scott from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and Diarmaid Ó Foighil from the University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology, independently discovered the clam in 1989. While chatting, they realized that they had both been researching the same species, even though Valentich-Scott was working in Santa Barbara and Foighil was on...