雅思阅读 167: A Whale Necropolis in the Deep Indian Ocean（印度洋深处的鲸鱼墓地）

改编自 National Geographic / Nature（2026年6月）。雅思阅读 Section 3 难度，约 1050 词。 素材来源：https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/whale-graveyard-deep-sea-bones-fossils

Reading Passage

A. On the barren deep seafloor, where sunlight never reaches and food arrives only as a slow drizzle of organic particles from above, the carcass of a dead whale is an event. Like an unexpected banquet appearing on an empty island, it draws hardy creatures from kilometres around and turns a biological ghost town into a crowded neighbourhood. These isolated oases, known as whale falls, usually consist of a single sunken whale attended by a small band of deep-sea specialists. Researchers probing the abyss west of Australia recently found something on a different scale altogether: a sprawling cetacean cemetery containing nearly five hundred individual whale remains, accumulated over millions of years. Described in the journal Nature, this "whale necropolis" is now thought to be the largest concentration of fossil whale bones ever discovered in the deep sea, and it lies at depths nearly twice those of any previously known whale fall — some specimens resting more than four and a half miles beneath the surface. Its bones are crowded with animals, and many of those animals appear to be species no one had ever named.

B. The expedition that found it was neither planned nor expected. Between February and March 2023, a team led by Xiaotong Peng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering descended in the deep-diving submersible HOV Fendouzhe into the Diamantina Fracture Zone, a rugged, 750-mile tract of the southeastern Indian Ocean carved by trenches and ridges. Equipped with video cameras, mechanical arms and vacuum-like sampling devices, the craft was surveying a little-studied abyss when, around 4.35 miles down, it stumbled onto a scatter of fossilised skeletons. Finding one or two isolated falls in such a setting would have been unsurprising; what astonished the divers was the sheer density. Over more than thirty dives, the team documented 485 separate sites bearing whale bones. Chemical traces preserved in the bones allowed the team to date the oldest specimens to nearly 5.3 million years ago. Uniquely, modern skeletons lay scattered among the ancient ones, meaning the trench is not a frozen cemetery but an active one, still receiving new dead whales today. Most dense fossil sites stopped accumulating millions of years ago; this one never closed. The contrast matters because it lets researchers watch a single ecosystem at two moments separated by geological time, comparing the animals that colonised a bone five million years ago with those that colonise it now.

C. Every modern fall the team examined was crawling with life. A single carcass covering less than eleven square feet supported 2,840 individual deep-sea animals. In total, the observers counted 35 distinct kinds of creature feeding on the whales: jellyfish, spindly brittle stars, and deep-sea clams whose tissues harbour symbiotic bacteria that turn sulphurous chemicals from the rotting bones into energy. Most conspicuous of all were the so-called bone-eating worms, which secrete acid to dissolve the skeleton into organic matter that their own resident bacteria then convert into food. The diversity was so high that when the team took DNA samples from 21 of the creatures collected from bone surfaces coated in white microbial mats, only one could be tied confidently to a previously described species. Specialists caution that communities at these trench depths are clearly different from those found at whale falls in shallower water, suggesting that depth itself shapes which animals arrive to feast.

D. The bones themselves tell a second story. A few of the larger remains belonged to baleen whales — a sei whale and an Antarctic minke among them — but the great majority of the skeletons were beaked whales, an elusive family of deep divers with dolphin-like beaks, reinforced skulls and tusk-like teeth that let them hold their breath for more than an hour. The density of bone in their snouts is likely why so many skulls survived in such remarkable shape. Over the millennia, many became encrusted in black ferromanganese deposits that precipitate naturally out of seawater, a mineral coating one expert likens to a protective "sarcophagus" that preserved the skulls. Among the fossil beaked whales, the scientists identified and named a brand-new species, Pterocetus diamantinae, which lived as early as 5.3 million years ago. The finds include skulls of living species too, such as Andrews' beaked whale and the strap-toothed whale. Because beaked whales are so rarely observed at sea — they dive for more than an hour and surface only briefly — their fossil record is almost the only window onto how such elusive animals evolved. The new skeletons should help researchers reconstruct how these deep divers came to hold their breath, chase squid and ram rivals with reinforced snouts.

E. Why this particular trench became such a graveyard seems to be a matter of geography and depth. The area lies along the migration routes of several baleen whales, and the squid and fish in its deep water also draw beaked whales down. Some individuals are thought to have died while pursuing prey into trenches that lie below their maximum diving range, succumbing to exhaustion or to decompression sickness, their skeletons then sinking and being funnelled into the V-shaped folds of the seabed over millions of years. The team suspects similar bone accumulations probably exist in other places where deep-diving whales congregate — off southern Africa, for instance, and near the Iberian Peninsula. Whether or not those sites are found, the Australian necropolis has already rewritten expectations: a single sunken whale is an oasis, but a trench that has collected them for five million years is an archive, preserving not only bones but the entire deep-sea food web that rises around them. For researchers, the site is a natural experiment running in slow motion, watched over by a robot under four miles of water.

Questions 1-4

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B, C, D and E from the list of headings below.

List of Headings i. An unplanned expedition that stumbled on a scale no one expected ii. How to pilot a deep-sea submersible iii. A bonanza of deep-sea life, much of it unnamed iv. The chemical structure of ferromanganese v. Beaked whales, preserved in mineral sarcophagi vi. Why baleen whales migrate vii. A trench that became a graveyard — and what it implies elsewhere

1. Paragraph B: ____
2. Paragraph C: ____
3. Paragraph D: ____
4. Paragraph E: ____

Questions 5-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

5. What is unusual about the newly discovered whale fall site? A. It is the shallowest ever recorded. B. It contains nearly 500 whale remains at unprecedented depth. C. It contains only one whale skeleton. D. It is entirely free of animal life.

6. What did the team find when they analysed 21 collected creatures genetically? A. All 21 matched known species. B. Only one was confidently matched to a previously described species. C. None of the animals were alive. D. The DNA was too damaged to read.

7. Why did so many beaked-whale skulls survive in good condition? A. They were made of metal. B. Their dense reinforced bone and ferromanganese coating helped preserve them. C. Divers restored them with cement. D. The deep water dissolved all other bones.

8. Why do the researchers think so many whales died in this trench? A. A single mass stranding event. B. It lies on migration routes and some whales dove beyond their depth limits. C. Toxic waste poisoned the whales. D. Underwater volcanoes killed them.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. Some specimens at the site lie more than four miles below the surface.
10. The oldest whale bones at the site date to about 5.3 million years ago.
11. Every animal found on the whale carcasses had already been described by science.
12. Bone-eating worms produce acid to dissolve the whale bones.
13. The site is known to attract large numbers of human tourists.

Questions 14-15

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

A single small carcass supported 2,840 deep-sea animals, and only one of 21 collected creatures could be matched to a (14) __________ species. Over millennia, many skulls became encrusted in (15) __________, which helped preserve them.

答案与解析

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