A submersible ride revealed a vast whale graveyard. And it holds more than just bones

Scientists who recently piloted a submersible to a remote spot in the southeastern Indian Ocean have identified one of the largest and deepest whale graveyards containing hundreds of fossils, including one representing a previously unknown species. But not everything in this deep-sea necropolis is dead.

Tens of thousands of feet below the surface, dead or dying whales have drifted to the vast graveyard, their bones commingling across an area measuring approximately 746 miles (1,200 kilometers) long. Alongside the oldest bones are modern skeletons, suggesting that whale remains have settled on this spot continuously for at least 5 million years, based on the ages of the fossils, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Most of the remains belong to beaked whales, which have skulls that taper into slender snouts like those of dolphins. These whales are deep-diving and spend little time near the surface, so they are rarely seen and very little is known about their habits.

Researchers observed some sunken whale cadavers in the graveyard that were recent enough to still have scavengers attached to them; known as whale falls, these carcasses nourish diverse communities of deep-sea life, including bone-eating worms, snails, long-armed brittle stars and bivalves that survive through chemosynthesis — using chemical energy to produce their food. Many of these species may also be new to science, the study authors reported.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/submersible-ride-revealed-vast-whale-163721813.html