How a Mass Whale Graveyard Ended Up Beneath a South American Highway

connect Alaska to Argentina , the Pan - American Highway consort some 30,000 miles northerly to south . Construction to widen the highway shortly stop , however , to make mode for utter whales back in 2010 , when workers digging through a distant stretch of the Chilean desert found a immense trove of off-white millions of years old . Now , scientists intend they have figured out how the extinct whales end up on land in the first place .

Because the route would only pause — but not detour — for the whales , paleontologists rushed in and worked feverishly to document the site before it was paved over . 3D exposure ( below ) preserved the site digitally . The bone themselves now sit in museum in Santiago and the nearby city of Caldera . As for the site , the northbound lane of the Pan - American Highway current pass through it .

The roadside find , detailed in anew study , turn out to be the dim appeal of out marine mammals ever . The 40 whale skeletons were found in four distinct layers stacked on top of one another , meaning the creatures were beached in four freestanding case . But how did they all end up in this minor , waterless region of Chile called Cerro Ballena ?

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With only whale bones and dirt , scientists begin piecing together the clues . one thousand thousand of years ago , Cerro Ballena was a tidal flat where hulk could have gotten run aground . There were several different heavyweight species , making a single disease a less probable grounds . One bent of hulk was find largely undisturbed and stomach - up , meaning they were already dead when they washed to shore . The best explanation for recur whale decease was toxic algae : bloom of toxic alga can still cause whale strandings today .

hundred more fossils could still be hidden near the main road , and the University of Chile in Santiago plans to afford a research place in the arena , turn this desert highway into a entrancing and unexpected site for maritime paleontology . The deed of construction is often at betting odds with history , but it can occasionally uncover extraordinarypieces of it.[Proceedings of the Royal Society BviaScienceandNew Scientist ]

https://gizmodo.com/beneath-the-streets-lost-cities-1447447681

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