SCIENTISTS FIND ANCIENT WHALE GRAVEYARD IN INDIAN OCEAN DEPTHS

Scientists have discovered a whale-bone graveyard on the floor of the southeastern Indian Ocean, home to thriving communities of jellyfish, tubeworms, brittle stars, sea cucumbers, squat lobsters and saltwater clams. The site lies up to 7 kilometres below the surface and is the largest, deepest, and oldest whale-fall graveyard yet found. Researchers conducted multiple deep-sea submersible dives in 2023 to collect samples and map the necropolis. They identified five carcass sites and fossils, including skulls from beaked and baleen whales, with the oldest bones dating back 5.3 million years.

Xikun Song, a biologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, said the size of whales and the unique chemistry of their bones are central to creating these underwater ecosystems. Song, who participated in the research, noted that the extreme depth of the ocean makes such sites exceptionally difficult to locate. The bones survived for millions of years partly because they are dense enough to resist bone-eating worms and deep enough to avoid burial by sediment. A mineral coating from surrounding seawater also appears to have slowed degradation.

The findings were published in the journal Nature. Many of the creatures feeding on the carcasses are likely undocumented species. Palaeontologist Stephen Godfrey of the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland, who was not involved in the study, described the number of specimens as remarkable. The study authors suggest the whales may have died from natural causes, exhaustion, or illness linked to deep-sea diving.