Blurs

At depths of up to 7 kilometres, scientists have discovered hundreds of whale fossils — and living ecosystems thriving on whales that have fallen there today. There is a place on Earth where the dead don't simply disappear. They become ecosystems. Far beneath the Indian Ocean, in darkness that sunlight has never reached, the bodies of whales sink through thousands of metres of water and eventually come to rest on the seabed. Their flesh attracts scavengers. Their bones become habitats. Bacteria extract chemical energy from what remains. Specialised worms bore into the skeleton. Molluscs live from the chemistry generated by decomposition.  And after the animals themselves have vanished, their bones can remain behind for geological periods of time. Now scientists have discovered a vast accumulation of these remains in one of the least explored environments on Earth. It stretches for approximately 1,200 kilometres across the Diamantina Zone of the southeastern Indian Ocean. Researcher...