By February 2009, the white-nose bat-killing syndrome in the Northeastern U. S. has expanded beyond New York, Vermont and Massachusetts to five more Northeastern states: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Scientists are afraid mortality could reach near 100% in cave-dwelling bats and spread into Midwest.
On March 2, 2009, people were trying frantically to save 200 pilot whales and other dolphins stranded on King Island north of the state of Tasmania, Australia – the most recent in a string of unexplained beachings since November 2008. Scientists say repeated beachings are unusual and so far have no answers.
A long-standing question in Mars research has been: Did volcanic Mars have hot springs? If so, was there life? Astrobiologists now report possible hot spring sites in Arabia Terra and the Gusev crater region where the Spirit rover found almost pure silica in 2008, a sure sign of hot water moving over rocks.
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