World's Largest Known Whale Graveyard Found in Indian Ocean at Record Depth

Chinese scientists discovered the world's largest known whale graveyard in the Diamantina Fracture Zone of the southeastern Indian Ocean west of Australia. The site contains nearly 500 catalogued whale skeletons spread along a 1,200-kilometer corridor at depths reaching 7,000 meters. 3 million years, making the graveyard both the deepest and oldest known on Earth.

The Fendouzhe submersible located the site during 32 dives conducted in 2023. The three-person vessel used robotic arms to collect fossil samples. Researchers identified a new though extinct species of whale among the skeletons.

Most of the 485 catalogued fossils belong to different species of beaked whales. Scientists estimate the Diamantina Zone could contain more than 10 million carcasses in total. 7 million tonnes of sequestered carbon, according to Xiaotong Peng.

Lead study author Xiaotong Peng stated the researchers were "astonished" when the scale of the discovery became clear. "But discovering a necropolis of this scale was completely unexpected: the size of distribution, the depth and the age range were far beyond anything we had imagined," Xiaotong Peng said.

" "The vibrant ecosystems we saw offered a completely different perspective on this otherwise dark and cold ocean floor," Peng Zhou said.

Animals observed living on the carcasses include jellyfish, brittle stars, bone-boring worms, and bivalves. The area is a popular foraging habitat for whales and contains a V-shaped trench that funnels carcasses to the seafloor. " "The vast number of fossil whale falls documented, including a new species of beaked whale, is truly amazing and is of major importance to understanding whale evolution and whale distributions over geologic time," Craig Smith said.