Overview
- The Nature paper published Wednesday, June 10, reports a 2023 submersible program mapped a 1,200 km corridor in the Diamantina Fracture Zone and documented 485 whale‑fall sites, including 476 fossil remains and five active carcasses.
- Strontium isotope dating shows the fossil record at the site goes back about 5.3 million years, and the team formally described a new extinct beaked whale species, Pterocetus diamantinae.
- The five active whale falls occur at hadal depths up to roughly 7,001 metres and host rich communities such as microbial mats, bone‑eating Osedax worms, brittle stars, and chemosymbiotic bivalves.
- Authors attribute exceptional bone preservation to dense beaked‑whale rostra, very slow sedimentation and ferromanganese oxide coatings, and they propose V‑shaped topography and local foraging may funnel carcasses to the trench floor; the paper also presents model‑based extrapolations of more than 10 million carcasses and about 6.7 million tonnes of sequestered carbon that need further testing.
- Specimens and samples have been returned for lab study and the authors say the find will drive further hadal exploration and focused taxonomic, ecological and geochemical work to map deep‑sea biodiversity and refine whale‑fall roles in long‑term carbon cycling.