Overview
- The study published June 10 reports researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences surveyed 485 whale‑fall sites across about 1,200 kilometres of the Diamantina Fracture Zone at depths of roughly 4,200–7,000 metres, recording five active falls and 476 fossilized remains.
- The discovery came from 32 crewed submersible dives using Fendouzhe in 2023, and scientists recovered dated specimens ranging from about 120,000 years to 5.26–5.3 million years and formally named a new extinct beaked whale, Pterocetus diamantinae.
- The five active whale falls host rich chemosynthetic and scavenger communities including microbial mats, bone‑eating Osedax worms, bivalves and brittle stars, with many organisms that may be new to science.
- The team links exceptional preservation to dense beaked‑whale rostra, ferromanganese mineral coatings, very slow sedimentation and V‑shaped topography that funnels carcasses, and they estimate the corridor could contain millions of carcasses and millions of tonnes of sequestered carbon.
- Authors say further lab analyses, expanded taxonomic work and more deep dives are planned to test whether similar growing fossil megasites exist elsewhere and to use the archive to trace cetacean evolution and deep‑sea connectivity.