2026-06-10 中国科学院（CAS）
Figure 1 Whale-fall ecosystems in the sulfophilic stage in the Diamantina Zone. (Image
＜関連情報＞
- https://english.cas.cn/newsroom/headlines/202606/t20260610_1161555.shtml
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10546-z
ディアマンティーナ海域にある、530万年前の深海クジラの墓地 A 5.3-million-year-old deep-sea whale necropolis in the Diamantina Zone
Xiaotong Peng,Peng Zhou,Xikun Song,Giovanni Bianucci,Mengran Du,Alberto Collareta,Zhaoming Gao,Tongtong Xie,Mingyao Teng,Daniel Leduc,Sadie Mills,Kaiwen Ta,Jiwei Li,Taoshu Wei,Shamik Dasgupta,Hao Liu,Yuan He,Wenjing Xu,Shuangquan Liu & Hanyu Zhang
Nature Published:10 June 2026
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10546-z
Abstract
Whale falls are biodiversity oases at seabeds1,2,3,4,5,6, yet their record from the oceans has remained sparse and fragmentary6,7. 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.
