Chinese scientists have discovered the world’s largest and oldest known whale graveyard on the floor of the Indian Ocean, a 1,200-kilometre corridor of bones stretching as deep as 7,000 metres, with fossils dating back 5.3 million years.
Results that have just been published in the journal Nature on Wednesday are already shaking scientists’ knowledge about deep-sea communities.
In 2023, scientists working at the Chinese Academy of Sciences will conduct 32 dives in the Fendouzhe submarine, which has revealed fossils belonging to beaked whales of different species, totalling 485 in number, west of Australia in Diamantina.
Collecting samples with robot arms, the research team discovered jellyfish, brittle stars, bone-eating worms, and bivalves that lived attached to the dead whales’ bodies. Some of these creatures are thought to be newly identified. There was also a new extinct species of whales found among the fossilised remains.
Xiaotong Peng, the first author from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explained that the team was quite surprised as they realised the size of the cemetery. Based on the count of fossils, the team is convinced that there could be more than 10 million corpses present, accounting for 6.7 million tonnes of carbon sequestration.
The V-shaped depression that exists in this region serves as a way to bring dead whales down to the sea bottom, thus creating such an enormous amount of skeletons over the course of many years.
Some of the creatures found close to the dead whales can be seen living around hot springs and cold seeps too.
The authors of the research refer to these habitats as “evolutionary hotspots and biogeographic stepping stones” for animals dependent on sulfides. “It was extremely exciting,” remarked Craig Smith, a University of Hawaii oceanographer, about his discovery in 1987 of the first whale fall. American paleontologist, Stephen Godfrey compared the finding to the discovery in 1977 of hydrothermal vent communities, and urged submersible expeditions to search for more such graveyards around the globe.
