Overview
- The Nature paper, published Wednesday, June 10, 2026, reported 485 whale‑fall and fossil sites spanning about 1,200 kilometres of the Diamantina Fracture Zone and reaching hadal depths near 7,000 metres.
- Expedition teams recorded roughly 476 fossilized whales and five active whale falls after 32 crewed submersible dives in 2023, and returned dozens of bone samples dated between about 5.26 million and 120,000 years ago.
- Most remains are dense beaked‑whale skulls whose mineral coatings and the zone’s very slow sedimentation helped preserve bones for millions of years, enabling researchers to name a new extinct species, Pterocetus diamantinae.
- Active whale falls host rich chemosynthetic communities — including Osedax bone‑eating worms, brittle stars and chemosymbiotic bivalves — showing that such ecological hotspots can persist at hadal depths.
- Authors extrapolate the corridor may contain millions more carcasses and store significant carbon, but they and outside scientists stress the estimates and hypotheses about migration funnels need broader surveys and follow‑up work.