Where is one of the last places on Earth scientists would look for a new coral reef? Perhaps the mouth of the Amazon River, where huge freshwater outflows meet the Atlantic Ocean. But that’s exactly where researchers found a thriving reef complex. “It may be an unfavorable coral reef environment, but nonetheless a vibrant reef exists there,” says Fabiano Thompson of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in Brazil, one of several co-authors of a paper on the discovery published on April 22, 2016, in the journal Science Advances. 

Dybas, C.L. 2016. Ripple marks—The story behind the story. Oceanography 29(3):22–23, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2016.69.

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