Cape Talk, Tuesday night

That they found are actually beaked whales. And beaked whales are really interesting because they, you know, they're very deep sea animals, deepest diving mammals. We very rarely see them. So most of these fossils are from beaked whales. And what they generally do is they find these canyons and these trenches and these deep sea areas where you find a lot of deep water squid and fish, and they hunt there and they forage there. And it's also

Near area which we call sort of the migratory corridor for beaked whales, as well as some baleen whales. And as we know, whales are also called these carbon sinks. So when they die, initially they'll float up to the surface and eventually they'll drop down to the bottom of the sea. And in this instance, it seems like, well, on the one side, it's near foraging ground for these deep sea mammals. But there's also like the topography of the zone is very interesting. And it's got quite a wee-shaped surface.

It's almost like a funnel that collects these carcasses. But what makes it like really actually quite mind-blowing is that these peaked whales have got the highest known bone density and mineral content among all living vertebrates. So their bones can persist much longer at great depths before it will dissolve or be consumed by all sorts of EBGBs, like bone-eating worms. So it was very lucky that, I mean, we.

Lasted so long specifically because they beaked whales in this specific whale, and they were also encased by different oxides, which sort of sealed them. So that made it possible to find these actually still in existing bones, especially the skull, you know, the head part of the bone. And what makes this area also very special is that it's got very, very low sedimentation. So, probably one of the lowest rates that you can ever find in the ocean. I think.

Like 0.5 to 5 millimeters of sediment collects over a thousand years. So these skeletal remains can be exposed for hundreds and thousands of years on the bottom part, but on the slopes of this area, you know, it could lie there exposed for millions of years. So this is like the perfect storm get together for scientists. You know, peaked whales, low sedimentation, exploring that specific area. And then they made this incredible discovery.

Including a new species which has been named Pterocetus diamantini, and also the feeling that these ecosystems created by these whale carcasses, supporting other deep sea like jellyfish, worms, crustaceans, and expecting many of those to be new to science as well. In terms of cetacean evolutionary history, is the fact that the skeleton has been