Scientists have made a big discovery whale A graveyard stretching for hundreds of miles in the Indian Ocean, where some fossilized bones are more than 5 million years old.
The deep-sea “megasite,” which researchers have named the Diamantina Zone Necropolis, is the most extensive accumulation of whale carcasses and fossils ever discovered, a new study published Wednesday (June 10) in the journal Nature found. Nature.
“It covers a distance of more than 1,200 kilometers [750 miles]who rejects faith,” nick piensoncurator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science. “‘Megasite’ is a perfectly appropriate term. I think they’ve really uncovered something special.”
“The density is crazy”
xiaotong pengDeep-sea researchers from the Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their colleagues used an underwater vehicle called the . Fendouze Submersible Surveying the seafloor in the Diamantina Zone, a region of peaks and rifts in the southeastern Indian Ocean.
After initially spotting one fossil, the team conducted 32 dives covering a survey area of approximately 0.25 square miles (0.64 square kilometers). In total, they identified 476 whale fossils and five carcasses of whales that had recently died, at a depth of 13,800 to 23,000 feet (4,200 to 7,000 m), known as Whale Falls.
16.4-foot-long (5 m) Antarctic minke whale on the ocean floor. This whale fall was host to 26 invertebrate species.
(Image credit: Global Trends, IDSSE)
Extrapolating from these data, the authors said there could be seven to eight whale carcasses and about 750 fossils per square kilometer in the area.
The largest carcass is a 16.4-foot-long (5 m) skeleton from the Antarctic. minke whale (Balaenoptera bonariensis), researchers said, but most of the remains are from beaked whale – We know very little about marine mammals because they live in the open ocean and spend a lot of time diving.
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The five active whale falls are covered in bacteria that live without light or oxygen and break down the oil in the whale’s bones, producing hydrogen sulfide. This source of chemical energy enables the carcasses to host diverse communities of jellyfish, brittle stars, bone eaters Osedax The authors found that insects and bivalve mollusks, which together reach a density of up to 2,840 individuals per square meter.
The authors wrote that while many members of whale-fall communities may also be newly discovered species, because most could be matched to the genus or family level using DNA data from the specimens, only one could be confidently assigned to a species: a clam known as Abiesogena southwarde.
“The density is insane, as is the fact that they’re probably all new to science,” said stephen godfreyCurator of Paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland, who was not involved in the study. “It’s as if each of these whale waterfalls is a new little restaurant opening up in an area 1,200 kilometers long [745 miles] Strip malls,” he told Live Science.
The distribution and abundance of whale fossils and whales occur in the Diamantina Zone. Orange circles mark dive sites where whale fossils or whale springs were observed.
According to the study authors, these are the deepest whale-fall communities ever found, with a depth of about 22,000 feet (6,700 m) deeper than any other known community, about 8,200 feet (2,500 m).
A fossil repository is being built
Peng and his colleagues recovered 43 fossils and dated 33 of them based on the ratio of strontium isotopes present. These fossils belonged to five beaked whale species and one species baleen whaleA group that includes bowhead and humpback whales.
The oldest fossil found in the area was that of an extinct beaked whale. pterocetes This species is about 5.3 million years old, dating to the early Pliocene. Another fossil discovery represented a new species, which the authors named Pterocetus diamantina.
All that remains in most specimens is the bony upper jaw, or rostrum. These fossils came primarily from two species: the Andrews’ beaked whale (Mesoplodon bodoini) and the belt-toothed whale (Mesoplodon leyardi). Both of these species are still found in the Indian Ocean, but the fossils the team discovered could be up to 1 million years old.
“What’s really amazing is that this megasite is showing beaked whale ecology on a geologic time scale, so you’re getting extinct species overlapping the fossil remains of extant species,” Pynson said.
The megasite is in line with either the famous Lagerstätte fossil depositswhere there is high quality preservation including soft tissue, or Burgess Shale in CanadaWhich has a huge abundance of animals, Godfrey said, “Only here, you have an animal that is still forming.”
Beaked whales are rarely seen, so it may seem strange to find the remains of so many individuals in one place. But Godfrey said these animals may be better preserved because of the staying power of their rostra, which has the highest known bone density and mineral content among living vertebrates.
This means that they can remain at considerable depths for a long time without dissolving or being eaten by bone-eating insects, after which they solidify with ferromanganese oxide and cover the bone in a kind of natural coffin.
“It seals the sample, so it will last indefinitely, or at least 5 million years, and who knows how much longer,” Godfrey said.
Why so many dead whales?
Antarctic minke whale falls that are now host to many marine species, including brittle stars, bone-eating worms, tubeworms, sea anemones and amphipods.
(Image credit: Global Trends, IDSSE)
The authors observed numerous squid and fish during dives in the Diamantina Zone, suggesting that the area provides an ideal deep-water foraging area for beaked whales. This may mean that more whales will survive and die in the area, even though when a whale dies, its decomposition may cause it to expand with gas and float to the surface for long distances before eventually falling to the ocean floor.
Peng and colleagues also suggested that the temptation of beaked whales to chase prey beneath them may increase the risk of mortality. Maximum observed diving depth approximately 10,000 feet (3,000 m)Due to which they are at risk of lung collapse or decompression sickness.
The authors suggested that another possibility is that the V-shaped topography of the Diamantina Zone may trap drowning bodies in a small area.
“I think what they’re dealing with is an analog of terrestrial tar pits or caves which are natural traps where organic remains accumulate over time,” Pynson said.
However, this is only part of the story. Normally, ancient remains on the ocean floor are covered by sediments of eroded rocks, so we will never be able to see the fossils. But the study authors said sedimentation rates near the Diamantina Zone are incredibly low — only 0.02 to 0.22 inches (0.05 to 0.55 centimeters) per 1,000 years. This means that skeletal remains may have been exposed for hundreds of thousands of years in flat low-lying parts of the region, and for millions of years on slopes or in elevated parts, the team said.
They believe there may be other similar “necropolises” off South Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and on the remote Crozet and Kerguelen islands near Antarctica, where some fossils have already been discovered.
Peng, X., Zhou, P., Song, S., Zhang, H. (2026). A 5.3 million year old deep sea whale graveyard in the Diamantina Zone. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10546-z
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