10 Bizarre Things Found In The Desert

Sea Mammal Graveyard

During a road repair in 2010, crews who were responsible for expanding the Pan-American Highway unearthed fossils of forty whales, dolphins, seals, aquatic sloths, and fish related to swordfish. Many people were confused about how a collection of sea mammals could have died and ended up in the Atacama Desert, which is forty metres above sea level. In an interview, paleobiologist Nick Pyenson explained that this is "the richest site for fossil marine mammals in the world." Experts believe it was formed when numerous fish and mammals washed up on the Cerro Ballena hill and were killed by an algae infection. Nature preserved the fossils for six to nine million years.