Whale falls are biodiversity oases at seabeds1,2,3,4,5,6, yet their record from the oceans has remained sparse and fragmentary6,7. Here we report the discovery of a vast whale necropolis in the Diamantina Zone (4,616- to 7,001-m depth), extending about 1,200 km along the sea floor of the southeastern Indian Ocean. This area has a deep and extensive accumulation comprising five modern natural whale-fall communities and 476 fossil cetaceans recorded. We show that carcasses host specialized communities dominated by brittle stars, bone-boring worms and chemosynthesis-based bivalves and that the fossil record in this area comprises both extant and extinct deep-diving beaked whales. Isotopic dating shows that whale falls in this region have occurred since at least 5.3 million years ago. These findings reshape the understanding of the limits and biogeography of whale-fall ecosystems and establish some deep sea floors as a fossil archive for tracing cetacean evolution over geological time.
Distribution and abundance of whale fossils and whale falls in the Diamantina Zone.
Orange circles indicate dive locations where whale fossils or whale falls were observed; circle size corresponds to the number of whale remains recorded per dive. Whale falls in the sulfophilic stage are marked with white arrows. White circles denote dives with no observed whale fossil or whale fall. Notably, the distribution of both whale falls and whale fossils is restricted to the Diamantina Zone sea floor; none were detected outside this region. Figure adapted from ref. 51, Wiley, under a Creative Commons licence CC BY 4.0.
American Buddhist Net 