A massive, 745-mile long whale graveyard has been discovered in the south-east of the Indian Ocean. At four miles deep, this trench has sparked a lot of interest from scientists for the potential discoveries it could be holding within.
Researchers from China, Italy, and New Zealand discovered the graveyard, which contains remains from whales that lived 5.3 million years ago. Organisms and species living down there could be entirely new to science, and the researchers say they never expected to find something of this scale in the sea.
"The size of distribution, the depth and the age range were far beyond anything we had imagined," said Xiaotong Peng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (via the BBC). Already, scientists have found remains for the Pterocetus benguelae, an extinct species more than 5 million years old, as well as a five-metre long minke whale carcass. Already, the team has found and labelled an undiscovered species as the Pterocetus diamantinae.
The site is noted to have limited accessibility, but right now scientists are just scratching the surface of the discoveries to be found inside. This discovery is being compared to the first in a series of blockbusters, sure to give us plenty of headline-making discovries.