{"id":732634,"date":"2026-06-12T21:21:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T21:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/732634\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T21:21:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T21:21:12","slug":"for-5-million-years-whales-have-come-to-this-place-in-the-indian-ocean-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/732634\/","title":{"rendered":"For 5 million years, whales have come to this place in the Indian Ocean to die"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The graveyard is the Earth\u2019s deepest and most extensive known accumulation of whale fossils, carcasses and the unique ecosystems they support, with some fossils dating back about 5.3 million years.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Detailed in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on Wednesday, the study was conducted by researchers from the CAS Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering in Sanya, an island city in southern Hainan province, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Pisa and Earth Sciences New Zealand.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cThese 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,\u201d according to the paper.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The researchers discovered this whale-fall ecosystem in the Indian Ocean\u2019s Diamantina Fracture Zone. Photo: Handout\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/89dd3875-5f37-4f4d-8cdf-fa98bad02a3a_8cd750b6.jpg\" title=\"The researchers discovered this whale-fall ecosystem in the Indian Ocean\u2019s Diamantina Fracture Zone. Photo: Handout\"\/>The researchers discovered this whale-fall ecosystem in the Indian Ocean\u2019s Diamantina Fracture Zone. Photo: Handout<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">When a whale dies, it triggers a rare natural phenomenon known as a whale fall. The carcass may drift on the surface for a time, attracting sharks and other predators, before gradually sinking to the ocean floor, where it is consumed by deep-sea scavengers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The graveyard is the Earth\u2019s deepest and most extensive known accumulation of whale fossils, carcasses and the unique&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[354420,64,63,354417,5225,354414,354418,75,352860,69320,55947,2270,354415,74262,128,352851,354416,354419],"class_list":["post-732634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-antarctic-minke-whale","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cas-institute-of-deep-sea-science-and-engineering","tag-chinese-academy-of-sciences","tag-diamantina-zone","tag-early-pliocene","tag-environment","tag-fendouzhe","tag-hainan-province","tag-indian-ocean","tag-nature","tag-peng-xiaotong","tag-sanya","tag-science","tag-whale-fall","tag-whale-fossils","tag-whale-necropolis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}