Nick Pyenson

This is a density that we have not seen anywhere else in the world.

Right.

It seems like that there is a preponderance of

deathly remains of whales, right?

And that's why I think the researchers use the word necropolis to describe the mega site.

And I kind of went back and forth about in my head whether necropolis was the right word because necropolis implies human intent, right?

Of concentrating remains.

It's also a whale necropolis is also a fantastic band name.

So that's out there for somebody to grab.

But what we're really seeing is that it's an exposure on the seafloor that has skeletal remains that accumulate over hundreds of thousands of years.

I mean, think of it this way, is that some of those bones on the seafloor have been exposed sitting there for the entirety of our own evolutionary history.

So the geologic time span of...

our own species is encompassed by those lonely set of bones on the seafloor.

So if you have enough time, then you can accumulate a lot of skeletal material.

You can think of it like a cave site or like a tar pit.

These are places that end up recording a lot of remains from the outside environment, including the bones of animals that happen to live nearby or even in the cave itself or fall into a tar pit.

And these will accumulate over a long period of time.

And clearly, this is still happening today.

That's what those active whale fall sites tell us, is that whales are still falling to the seafloor and being colonized and forming entire ecosystems that are supported by the nutrients from their bones.

I have such a long bucket list of places I want to go and fossils I would love to collect.