Scientists find 1,200-km whale graveyard 7 km deep in Indian Ocean

Researchers have identified what they describe as the world's largest, deepest and oldest whale graveyard in the southeastern Indian Ocean, along the Diamantina fracture zone west of Australia. The study, published in Nature, mapped a roughly 1,200-kilometer corridor of carcasses and fossils at depths of up to 7,000 meters. A team from China, Italy and New Zealand used the Fendouzhe submersible in 32 dives in 2023 and collected samples from 485 whale-fall and fossil sites. The finds included a 5.3 million-year-old extinct whale skull, a newly identified extinct species named Pterocetus diamantinae, and ecosystems of jellyfish, worms, crustaceans and other organisms feeding on the remains.