Break on through

Forty years from now, the world will be a whole different place. Really—our globes may have to be reconfigured. That’s because current projections predict that the Arctic will be entirely ice-free by 2050.

In a recent commentary in the journal Science, two California scientists say they expect a number of marine species—shellfish in particular—will migrate from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, because a passageway will be open for them, as was the case 3.5 million years ago.

UC Davis geologist Geerat Vermeij and Peter Roopnarine of the California Academy of Sciences predict the migration will not cause extinction of current Atlantic marine life, but rather would create more hybrid species.