Rolling 'Sea Grape' Rocks The Fossil Record

A submarine expedition that went looking for visually flashy sea creatures instead found a drab, mud-covered blob that may turn out to be truly spectacular indeed.  The grape-like animal, tentatively named the Bahamian Gromia, is actually a single-celled organism, fully one inch long. But what makes it really fantastic is that it moves -- very slowly -- by rolling itself along the ocean floor."At first, we assumed they were snails, because they had trails," said Sönke Johnsen, an associate professor of biology at Duke University. But after sucking up a few with the tools aboard the NOAA research submarine Johnson-Sea-Link and having a look, they figured the soft, nondescript blobs were simply some kind of elaborate poop. "We called them doo-doo balls," Johnsen said."We watched the video over and over," Johnsen said. The trails couldn't be the result of currents because they went in several directions at the same spot, and sometimes they even changed course. And they weren't the result of rolling downhill. In fact, one trail was found that went down into a small depression and came back up the other side."We argued about it forever," Johnsen said. "These things can't possibly be moving!" But they are, at a rate too slow to be captured on the sub's video. Johnsen guesses they move maybe an inch a day or less.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081203190030.htm

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