Researchers from the USA and Chile reported, in November 2011, a remarkable bone bed on the west coast of northern Chile near the port city of Caldera, about 700 kilometres (440 miles) north of the capital, Santiago. Excavations uncovered the remains of some 80 baleen whales of which more than 20 specimens were complete (figure 1).They also found other kinds of marine mammals including an extinct dolphin with tusks and a sperm whale.The previous year, construction workers upgrading the Pan-American Highway discovered the fossil site in a road cut just north of Caldera. Since then, teams of scientists led by palaeontologist Nick Pyenson from the Smithsonian Institute and Mario Suarez from the nearby Museo Paleontologico de Caldera have been working to excavate the fossils while the road works were temporarily suspended.
The fossils alongside the highway are confined to a sandstone ridge about 20 metres (70 feet) wide and 240 metres (800 feet) long (figure 2). Most whales were about 8 metres (25 feet) long, and perfectly preserved. Some whales were so close together that they overlapped one another (figure 3). The site in a corner of the Atacama Desert is now well above sea level and over a kilometre from the shore. Suarez said it was well known that whale bones jutted out of the ridge, which was given the name Cerro Ballena, or Whale Hill.
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