- WHY IT MATTERS: Alberto Lindner, a coral researcher at the University of São Paolo in Brazil, says the deep sea holds the key to the evolution of corals.
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Most people associate corals with tropical, shallow waters. But two-thirds of the world's corals can actually be found in the cold, deep seas.
New research shows that the second most diverse group of hard corals, called stylasterids, or lace corals, first evolved in the deep sea, and not in shallow waters as previously thought. Deep-sea corals can be spectacularly long-lived, with life spans of over 4,000 years, and they can be critical to understanding climate change in the past and future.
Source:
Sea coral footage courtesy of Alberto Lindner/NOAA
