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The rare blue octopus that surprised scientists has returned to the Galápagos Islands. The specimen, about the size of a golf ball, will be preserved at the Charles Darwin Research Station, which houses an extensive collection representing the archipelago’s extraordinary biodiversity. An expedition collected the first specimen of this species, distinguished by its small tentacles, in 2015 at a depth of more than 1,700 meters (5,600 feet) in the northern part of the Ecuadorian archipelago, known for its endemic flora and fauna. Only three specimens have been observed to date, but the other two were recorded only on video. The...

A geological secret passage beneath Panama may explain why rocks from Earth's mantle are found more than 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) from where they originated.This opening, located some 62 miles (100 km) below Earth's surface, may allow a flow of mantle materials to travel all the way from beneath the Galápagos Islands to beneath Panama.This never-before-discovered form of transport may also help explain why Panama has very few active volcanoes. On the west coast of Central America, the Cocos tectonic plate is diving down and pushes oceanic crust under the continental crust of the North American, Caribbean and Panama tectonic...

A new species of Galápagos iguana has scientists tickled pink. The pink iguana, named after its salmon-colored skin, lives only on the Wolf volcano on the island of Isabela. Charles Darwin did not visit the volcano on his travels to the Ecuadorian island chains in the 1830s, so the creature remained undiscovered until 1986, when it was spotted by park rangers. Only now has it been recognized as its own species.

For years, conservationists have been concerned about the impact of invasive plant species in the Galápagos Islands. Hundreds of species have been identified as being nonnative, introduced through human contact. The idea is to remove these plants to help keep the archipelago ecologically pristine. That’s a worthy goal. But there’s just one problem, according to a study in Science: some of these pariah plants turn out to be native after all. They predate humans in the Galápagos by thousands of years. The evidence for this is in the form of fossilized pollen grains found in sediment cores from bogs on...