The first confirmed sighting of a leucistic Southern elephant seal has occurred on a beach on Marion Island, fairly near Antarctica. The entire seal is creamy white, except for eyes and nose which sports the brown colour normally seen in elephant seals.

“It’s quite something in a species which is well-known,” says Ryan Reisinger of the University of Pretoria in South Africa, one of the researchers who discovered the seal.

There have been a few rare previous records of lighter coloured elephant seals, but none of these animals have been confirmed as leucistic. Reisinger and his colleagues have been researching Marion Island elephant seals for several years without ever encountering a leucistic specimen before.

See a picture of the seal here.

My attempts to get a good grip on how WordPress themes works continues and below you download my second free WordPress theme. Hopefully someone will like it and want to but it on their blog. The theme has 3 widget ready columns, has gravatar support and is fully compatible with WordPress 2.6. The theme has a search box and bio box that is unaffected by the use of widgets. Below you can see a picture of this green theme.

Official description: A clean simple SEO optimized 3 column green theme. The theme has two widget ready sidebars and gravatar support. Features a bio box that can be edited independently of the side bars. Theme is fully compatible with WordPress 2.6.

Tags: valid CSS, white, green, black, 3 columns, 3 column, three column, three columns, fixed width, widget, widget ready, simple, right sidebar, left sidebar, valid CSS bio box, gravatar support, gravatar, minimalistic, funky,

You can download this theme here