What are the Fossilized Remains of More Than 80 Whales Doing in the Driest Desert on Earth?

Situated more than half a mile from the ocean, atop a hill in Chile's notoriously arid Atacama desert, an international team of scientists has made an incredible discovery. Over 80 extraordinarily well-preserved whale and marine mammal fossils, many of them positioned just meters apart from one another, have been found gathered on a small patch of land that as recently as 2010 was destined to become a highway.

The excavation of the whales has been a collaborative effort between scientists at Chile's Paleontological Museum of Caldera and researchers from the Smithsonian Institution. The collaborators say that the remains, which include over 20 perfectly intact skeletons, are some of the most well-preserved ever discovered, and also some of the most mysterious.

Why, for example, are the whales situated so closely to one another? Some of the remains, like the ones pictured here, are actually overlapping. The excavation site measures just 20 meters wide by 240 meters long; explaining how the fossilized remains of over 80 marine mammals — including 25-foot-long baleen whales, a sperm whale, and an extinct dolphin species with walrus-like tusks — wound up gathered so closely together is high on the scientists' list of unanswered questions.
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