Researchers published in Nature uncovered about 500 whale remains in the Diamantina fracture zone of the southeastern Indian Ocean at roughly 7,000 meters depth. Some skeletons date up to 5.3 million years and include bones from extinct whale species previously unknown to science. The whale carcasses host living communities, including jellyfish, tubeworms, brittle stars and several undescribed deep-sea species, revealing long-lived specialized ecosystems around whale falls. Spanning roughly 1,200 kilometers of seafloor, the necropolis shows whale falls both preserve fossil records and sustain abyssal biodiversity over millions of years.
