GOP OUTLIERS: Two Republican presidential candidates, both trailing in the polls, criticized their own party for its climate change denial during Wednesday night’s debate. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and former New York Govenor George Pataki made their refreshingly reasonable statements in a segment that took place before the debate between front-runners began.

EXXON INVESTIGATION: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined two other Democratic presidential candidates in calling for a federal investigation of ExxonMobil's decades-long campaign of misinformation about climate change. “There’s a lot of evidence that (Exxon) misled people,” Clinton told a climate change activist at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.

SEAWEED SWELL NOT SO SWELL: Mexico deployed Navy vessels to discover the cause of a huge swell of seaweed that has piled as high as four feet at beaches along the country’s eastern coastline. Possible culprits incude global warming or increased runoff from farms in the Amazon.

AIRBOURNE DINOSAURS: The Bureau of Land Management and New Mexico’s National Guard airlifted the fossilized remains of two Pentaceratops—one of which is the first baby of the species ever found—to a museum on Thursday. 

A POST-POO WORLD: According to a just-released study, widespread extinction and population declines of large mammals, whose feces and decaying bodies used to fertilze both land and sea, has disrupted ecosystems globally.