Mystery of whale bones found in Chilean desert

[Lord Sidious]

Check this one out avalonuggets.
Yet another one that puts the cat amongst the chickens of the ''scientists'' who couldn't find their rear ends with a gps, map and compass.
Oh and maybe a sextant too.

Posted by Yahoo

It's a mystery that's nearly as old as time, but just how did these 75 whales manage to wind up in a desert more than two million years ago.

The bones of these ancient mammals were found just yards apart from each other in one of the world's best preserved graveyards for prehistoric whales, but scientists are still debating exactly how the bones ended up more than 800m inland, the Daily Mail reported.

The relics were found side-by-side near Caldera in the Atacama Desert in Chile back in June 2010, and the whales, many as big as buses, have been taken to the Smithsonian Institution for study.

Scientists are divided on just how they got there though - some believe they became disoriented and beached themselves, while others believe they were trapped in a lagoon after being moved inland by a landslide.

It's not the first time groups of bones have been found, there have been sites in Peru and Egypt, but the large number and relatively preserved nature of the bones makes this one of the more spectacular finds in archaeology.

"I think they died more or less at the same time,’ Nicholas Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said.

"There are many ways that whales could die, and we're still testing all those different hypotheses."

There's no conclusive evidence that the 75 whales all died approximately at the same time, and different measurements suggest they could have died between two and seven million years ago.

Pyenson said that it would be very hard to conclude when the animals died in the "lagoon-like environment".

The majority of the remains were those of baleen whales, but scientists also found a sperm whale skeleton and a now-extinct dolphin which had two walrus-like tusks.

"We're very excited about that," Pyenson said. "It is a very bizarre animal."

Vertebrae paleontologist Eric Fitzgerald hailed the find as significant.

"The fossils are exceptionally well preserved and quite complete — a rare combination in paleontology and one that will likely shed light on many facets of the ... ecology and evolution of these extinct species," Fitzgerald said.
He said it's possible "these fossilized remains may have accumulated over a relatively long period of time".

http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/w...hilean-desert/

[Billy]

Posted by Lord Sidious (here)
Check this one out avalonuggets.
Yet another one that puts the cat amongst the chickens of the ''scientists'' who couldn't find their rear ends with a gps, map and compass.
Oh and maybe a sextant too.


Scientists are divided on just how they got there though - some believe they became disoriented and beached themselves, while others believe they were trapped in a lagoon after being moved inland by a landslide.

But the scientists can never think outside the box that maybe at one time the Atacama desert was under the sea

[seko]

It could be a climate change, not global warming. Places that had ocean, now they don't and viceversa.

I wonder what will happen in a couple of decades

[Krullenjongen]

"....but just how did these 75 whales manage to wind up in a desert more than two million years ago...."

Well just like the giant Oysters on the Andes mountains came to lay there.
The was a flood ....a long time ago and that flood covered the whole earth.
That's why we see strange things like this.

[RMorgan]

I wouldn´t say that the flood covered the whole world. It´s close to impossible for this to happen.

All I can say is that the Earth is always changing. The Sahara desert used to be a rain-forest. The north-east Brazilian dry lands used to be a very deep sea. The Amazon forest is in the process of natural desertification, accelerated by man, and so on...

It´s very common to find small shells on deserts and other places very far away from the coast line.

This find is very cool, but not unusual.

Cheers,

Raf.

[John Parslow]

If you read Charles Fort's 'Book of the Damned' it does not stretch the imagination too far to believe that these may have dropped from the sky ...

JP

[bodhii71]

My hypothesis is akin to one I've been working out for another animal skeleton found in Peru. In Peru they have found skeletons of bovine, aka cows.
I have concluded that these cows, we're tunneling cows. The Puruvian Tunneling cow, or PTC for short. It is supposed they were very dangerous over long distances, but lacking anyway of locating prey, they died off very quickly, in their own tunnels.
I believe these whales may have sprung from the same branch of the evolutionary tree, the tunneling whales of chile.
I imagine they could cut great swaths of earth with thier mighty flippers but without plankton, probably didn't fair too well...
Carry on.

[passiglight]

probably tsunami's,,,,,,,,,,,,i have good evidence the planet is swamped by mile or even miles high tsunami's periodically,,,,and actually relatively short intervals,,,,,,,


one example is somerset and in particular the mendips, which are a set of hills over and around 1,000 feet high,,,,,,,,which is littered with sea creature fossils, and some which i have in my possession and found by me,,,,,,,,,,are very young fossils indeed,,,,,,,,,

more compelling is the fact that the majority of these fossils which are sea creatures are shells, very big shells,,,,,,,,,, are still closed, with the sea creature although dead, still inside the unopened shell,,,,,,,,,,,

as you probably know when the creature inhabiting a shell like a mussel or a cockle dies for example of old age,,,it releases it's hold on the two parts of the shell and they open,,,,,,,

nearly all the shells i have found are still fully intact,,, and the only way that could have happened is if the shell was not allowed to open by a force or weight holding it shut,,,,,,,,

like for example a lot of mud from the bottom of the sea,,,,,,,,,,,

just like i would expect to see after a large tsunami had washed over the land,,,,,,,,,

yet to find any whales yet though,

by the way a lot of the fossils i have found are much less than 20 thousand years old,,,,,,,much less indeed

[OneLittleFrog]

Posted by bodhii71 (here)
My hypothesis is akin to one I've been working out for another animal skeleton found in Peru. In Peru they have found skeletons of bovine, aka cows.
I have concluded that these cows, we're tunneling cows. The Puruvian Tunneling cow, or PTC for short. It is supposed they were very dangerous over long distances, but lacking anyway of locating prey, they died off very quickly, in their own tunnels.
I believe these whales may have sprung from the same branch of the evolutionary tree, the tunneling whales of chile.
I imagine they could cut great swaths of earth with thier mighty flippers but without plankton, probably didn't fair too well...
Carry on.

I love it. Besides, it's every bit as believable as the other theories listed above...........
(Occam's Other Razor: All things being equal, pick the answer that puts a smile on your face.)

[toad]

A tsunami is a good theory, makes alot of sense given the location of the atacama. But what was the atacama like 2,000,000 years ago? It is a very aride place, full of salt basins, its easy to speculate it was full of salt water at one point in history.

Regardless I find the atacama to be a truly fascinating and unique place on this planet.

[sunflower]

if by any chance scientists would be successful at extracting DNA from the remains we might end up with a marine "Jurassic Park".