Sharing this article from artdaily.org that was posted on the Provincetown Center for
Coastal Studies Facebook page. Enjoy!
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A prehistoric whale fossil lays in the Atacama desert near Copiapo, Chile.
More than 2 million years ago, scores of whales congregating off the Pacific
Coast of South America mysteriously met their end. Maybe they became
disoriented and beached themselves. Maybe they were trapped in a lagoon
by a landslide or a ferocious storm. Maybe they died there over a period of
a few millennia. But somehow, they ended up right next to one another,
many just several yards (meters) apart, entombed over the ages as the
shallow sea floor was driven upward by geologic forces and transformed
into the driest place on the planet. Today, the whales have emerged again
atop a desert hill more than half a mile (a kilometer) from the surf, where
researchers have begun to unearth one of the world's best-preserved
graveyards of prehistoric whales. AP Photo/Museo Paleontologico de Caldera.
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