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Peer-reviewedCC BYNature

A 5.3-million-year-old deep-sea whale necropolis in the Diamantina Zone

  • Xiaotong Peng1
  • Peng Zhou2
  • Xikun Song2
  • Giovanni Bianucci3
  • Mengran Du2
  • Alberto Collareta3
  • Zhaoming Gao2
  • Tongtong Xie2
  • Mingyao Teng2
  • Daniel Leduc4
  • Sadie Mills4
  • Kaiwen Ta2
8 more authors
  • Jiwei Li2
  • Wei Taoshu2
  • Shamik Dasgupta2
  • Hao Liu (12832)2
  • Yuan He2
  • Wenjing Xu2
  • Shuangquan Liu2
  • Hanyu Zhang2
4 affiliations
  1. 1State Key Laboratory of Deep-sea Science and Intelligence Technology, Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sanya, China. [email protected]
  2. 2State Key Laboratory of Deep-sea Science and Intelligence Technology, Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sanya, China
  3. 3Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
  4. 4Earth Sciences New Zealand, Wellington, New Zealand
Open at sourceDOICite

Abstract

. 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.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{peng202653millionyearold,
  title = {{A 5.3-million-year-old deep-sea whale necropolis in the Diamantina Zone}},
  author = {Xiaotong Peng and Peng Zhou and Xikun Song and Giovanni Bianucci and Mengran Du and Alberto Collareta and Zhaoming Gao and Tongtong Xie and Mingyao Teng and Daniel Leduc and Sadie Mills and Kaiwen Ta and Jiwei Li and Wei Taoshu and Shamik Dasgupta and Hao Liu (12832) and Yuan He and Wenjing Xu and Shuangquan Liu and Hanyu Zhang},
  journal = {Nature},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  doi = {10.1038/s41586-026-10546-z},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10546-z},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - A 5.3-million-year-old deep-sea whale necropolis in the Diamantina Zone
AU  - Xiaotong Peng
AU  - Peng Zhou
AU  - Xikun Song
AU  - Giovanni Bianucci
AU  - Mengran Du
AU  - Alberto Collareta
AU  - Zhaoming Gao
AU  - Tongtong Xie
AU  - Mingyao Teng
AU  - Daniel Leduc
AU  - Sadie Mills
AU  - Kaiwen Ta
AU  - Jiwei Li
AU  - Wei Taoshu
AU  - Shamik Dasgupta
AU  - Hao Liu (12832)
AU  - Yuan He
AU  - Wenjing Xu
AU  - Shuangquan Liu
AU  - Hanyu Zhang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/10
JO  - Nature
DO  - 10.1038/s41586-026-10546-z
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10546-z
AB  - . 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.
SN  - 0028-0836
SN  - 1476-4687
ER  -