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Find Along Chilean Highway Suggests Ancient Mass Stranding of Whales

Posted by samzenpus on from the look-at-the-bones dept.

sciencehabit writes "In 2010, workers widening a remote stretch of highway near the northwestern coast of Chile uncovered a trove of fossils, including the skeletons of at least 30 large baleen whales. The fossils—which may be up to 9 million years old—are the first definitive examples of ancient mass strandings of whales, according to a new study. The work also fingers a possible culprit."

14 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Let me guess... by msauve · · Score: 3, Funny

    "The work also fingers a possible culprit"

    Anthropomorphic Global Warming?

    (not a troll, just a funny, vote me down if you will)

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    1. Re:Let me guess... by EvilSS · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "The work also fingers a possible culprit" Anthropomorphic Global Warming? (not a troll, just a funny, vote me down if you will)

      Don't be stupid. It was obviously caused by US Navy sonar. Yes, our sonar is THAT powerful.

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      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    2. Re:Let me guess... by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 4, Funny

      "The work also fingers a possible culprit" Anthropomorphic Global Warming? (not a troll, just a funny, vote me down if you will)

      Don't be stupid. It was obviously caused by US Navy sonar. Yes, our sonar is THAT powerful.

      Actually, that highway is a toll road and they didn't have exact change. If you ever saw a 20 meter tractor trailer try to make a U-turn, just imaging what it must have been like trying to get 30, 30 meter whales to turn around. It's no wonder they didn't make it.

    3. Re:Let me guess... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think it will become clear when they find 30 smashed flower pots of petunias ...

    4. Re:Let me guess... by 228e2 · · Score: 2

      mmm . . . whale jam . . . .

      --
      Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
  2. Oceanic Algal Blooms? by rmdingler · · Score: 4, Informative
    And I had to read a good ways down through TFA to get to the teaser, including the second paragraph, where a marine biologist is quoted as saying, "This is an awesome snapshot of deep time."

    You're welcome.

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    1. Re:Oceanic Algal Blooms? by RockDoctor · · Score: 3, Informative
      'Oceanic algal bloom' is a credible proposition (though there wasn't any of the palynological or micropalaeontological evidence that one could reasonably have hoped for, and there is evidence of fairly active current movement, which doesn't really help an algal bloom hypothesis). But volcanic gas clouds (e.g. a sulphide-rich ignimbrite projecting out into the bay) is also credible.

      At this time, the cause of death isn't clear, and there are multiple credible possibilities.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  3. Re:Sonar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    It had to be the damn Navy testing advanced sonar!

    Activists! Run forth and protest!

    When your mom ends up beaching herself from one of those tests, you won't think it's so funny.

  4. George Lucas by istartedi · · Score: 2

    George Lucas's fault. He thought he could do something with whales and time travel in the Star Wars franchise, and this is the result.

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    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    1. Re:George Lucas by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 2

      George Lucas's fault. He thought he could do something with whales and time travel in the Star Wars franchise, and this is the result.

      I knew he was running out of ideas, but ripping off Star Trek IV...?!?

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  5. Re:I call bullshit by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, no, no. Not Humans. White Anglo Humans.

  6. Re:All man's fault by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hippie chicks who put out.

  7. Article seems a bit confused by djupedal · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The article says:
    "Second, most of the baleen whale skeletons had been preserved “belly-up”—a position that suggests the creatures died at sea, rolled upside down as they decomposed, and then remained inverted when high tides or storm surges deposited them on shore. That ultimate resting position is typical of modern baleen whales that die at sea, Goldbogen says.

    Finally, ripples preserved in the rocks indicate that the carcasses ended up lying crosswise to currents that had cast them onto the beach—just as in modern mass strandings, Pyenson says."

    We've been told that modern 'strandings' are the cause of death (witness all the efforts to return the creatures to deeper waters), not the result.

    1. Re:Article seems a bit confused by RockDoctor · · Score: 4, Informative
      If you RTFP (it is Open Access ; use it, or lose it!) you'll find that the original researchers don't take that paradigm. They're not at all clear about why the whales died, and think that many of the died and hit the seabed in depths of tens to a hundred or so metres (various lines of evidence : sediment patterns, levels of seabed life ; nearby unambiguous shoreline deposits ; constraints on the angle of slope of the seabed for sediment stability). Though parts of the sequence of beds in which the whales were found were definitely emergent (above sea level) at times, that's not considered the case for the particular beds (plural ! They represent thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years of repeated events.) in which the whale fossils have been found.

      TFP isn't confused. The coverage by a journalist working for Science Magazine may be. (I RTFP a few days ago, and promoted it to several geological discussion lists.)

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"