Fossils including possible baleen-whale ribs found at a depth of 5656 metres in the Indian OceanGlobal TREnD, IDSSE
The world’s deepest known whale graveyard has been discovered in the southern Indian Ocean at a depth of 7 kilometres. The remains found there include a new species of extinct beaked whale and other fossils that are over 5 million years old.
In early 2023, Peng Zhou at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues undertook 32 dives in a crewed submersible along 1200 kilometres of the seafloor, in an area known as the Diamantina Zone.
The expedition was part of the Global Hadal Exploration Programme, an effort led by Chinese scientists to explore all the deepest parts of the planet’s oceans, which range from 6000 to 11,000 metres below the surface. At these depths there is no light, and life must survive on what falls from the surface or generate its own energy from chemicals – known as chemosynthesis.
The first fossil whales were found at a depth of 7002 metres in a part of the Diamantina Zone known as the Dordrecht Deep, which is over 1100 kilometres south-west of Perth, Western Australia.
